Good Bad Things
by FreyjaBee
Summary: One mistake can start a cascade. Ultear's had a lifetime of them and can't seem to stop. Now she's caught watching a horror story unfold. An (independent) Heartbreak Grows in the Garden story. Rated M, warnings inside. (Romance, Horror, Crime, Angst? I don't know how to tag this.)
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings:** Sexual content, substance use, language, potential allusions to sexual abuse, violence. Honestly, I'm just covering my bases. I don't know what to expect, either.

This _is_ set in the _Heartbreak Grows in the Garden_ universe, and if you haven't read that, not to worry, you won't really have to if you want to read this one.

If you _do_ care, though, and you want to check out those other stories first, it goes _Tasting Obsession, Heartbreak Grows in the Garden,_ and _Stars in the Sky_. There is a one-shot on my other profile, RavenStyx, called _The Devil Doesn't Know his Name._ It's in the same universe, too. They're all relatively short.

Someone stop me.

Okay.

* * *

 ** _Good Bad Things_**

* * *

I'm cool and I'm calm and dangerous

* * *

The shower tile was hard under Ultear's knees but she didn't notice. The water was hot on her back, but she didn't know. The noise around her was loud but she didn't hear it. The girl in front of her had tattoos on her legs; they were bows.

Black, they were dyed black and contrasted with her fiery hair. She liked it when Ultear pulled it; her back would arch and her hips would rock back and she'd slide further down on Ultear's fingers. There was a man behind Ultear, so she had nowhere to go. He voiced a grunt Ultear would be disgusted with if she was sober. He pushed inside of her and she wondered, faintly, if there was a condom. There must have been. No one was irresponsible like that anymore.

He fucked her lovelessly. She couldn't tell if his cock was big or not, she had almost no feeling down there, except for now and again, when he'd push in so deep, he'd bottom out. Then it was a dull pain. And with it came a distant revulsion. This was not who she wanted, but it was who she was having. And for what? She couldn't say why she stopped on the sidewalk when he rolled up and asked her if she wanted to party. She couldn't say why she got into the truck, other than there was a beautiful girl in there with beautiful hair. She couldn't say why she took his alcohol or why she walked into this shitty motel with him, either. Honestly, she was smarter than this.

The man behind her grunted again and came into a condom he peeled off almost immediately afterwards. Ultear was relieved to see that piece of latex for a brief moment before he flushed it away in the toilet. It was gone and so was her shame. She could focus on something else. Taking her hand out of the girl. Pushing herself up off the bottom of the bathtub. She was drunk, really, really drunk. The walls were warbling, catching her when she thought she'd fall.

"Here. Come out here." The man grabbed her wrist and tugged her out onto a bathmat. That, at least, was clean. He wrapped a towel around her and gave one to the other girl. Ultear clutched it like a lifeline. It was the only thing that felt real.

The man went out into the main room and it took a moment, she had to pee, but afterwards, she drifted out, too, dazed and hazy.

"You need to get your stuff together." He seemed so sober.

"Yeah." Ultear found her jeans and her shirt. Not her underwear, though. Did she take that off separately? And when she put her hand into her pocket, she couldn't find her eyeliner. She'd spent twenty-five dollars on that eyeliner. It was good stuff. She pulled out the bed and the nightstand, checked behind the fridge and on the floor.

"I'll give you money for a new one," the man said.

"I just want the one I had," Ultear responded. "It's here." It had to be.

"It's not. Here." He took out his wallet and counted out money. Too much money. Even Drunk Ultear knew it was too much money. She tried to hand it back.

"This is too much."

"No. You take it. _Take_ _it_." He shoved it at her and made sure her hands closed around it. He gave the same to the redhead, who lounged mostly naked against the doorframe. He looked back over his shoulder and asked Ultear, "Get her dressed?"

Ultear didn't want to but someone had to. Their benefactor didn't look like he was going to be the one. She found a long dress that wasn't really winter-worthy and pulled it on for her. The material was nice. Ritzy nice. There was no bra, no underwear, and there had never been. There was a coat, though, a long one made of deerskin with fake fur around the collar. Ultear put that on her, too, and then took up her own scarlet pea coat. She had trouble with the arms. No one helped her.

The man opened the door and they filed out one-by-one, Ultear bringing up the rear. She closed the door behind herself and climbed back into the back of the shiny SUV. As they drove, she was asked, "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

"By Macy's," she said. It was central enough, and maybe she'd see someone she knew in amongst the crowd.

The SUV pulled up out front of the green-lit doors and the man asked, "You ladies got a number? In case I'm in town again?"

"No," Ultear said. The redhead tried giving him a number starting with nine. Ultear elbowed her and repeated, "No." She threw open the door then and spilled out into the parking lot. The redhead was behind her, cackling like she'd stolen something and gotten away with it. The SUV drove off and they were alone with the Alice Francis' _Shoot Him Down!_ spilling out of the strip club.

Ultear put her hand in her pocket and felt the roll of cash. "I think we just got paid like we were hookers." She said it quietly; it was a dirty little secret, even when she was drunk.

The redhead stopped laughing. "What's your name?"

"Ultear. You?"

She put her arms around Ultear's shoulders and kissed the edge of her ear. When her lips weren't pressed to Ultear's cheek, she whispered, "Flare."

Ultear shivered. She couldn't pinpoint why, though. The hot breath? Flare's name? Her intense and casual closeness? Whatever it was, when Flare asked her for her number, Ultear gave it to her. She drifted away afterwards, drunk and listless, a ship bobbing in the night. Ultear watched her go. Everything felt surreal. Happening quickly. Segmented. Real and not real.

The door to Macy's opened and a familiar head of dark hair emerged. Ultear shoved away her disquiet and smiled at Gray, not nicely, but sharply, like he was a mouse and she was a hungry cat. That's how he preferred her to look at him.

There was a girl trailing behind him. That changed. Juvia pulled out of his grasp even _before_ she saw Ultear, and stormed away in a huff.

"Juvia!" Gray half-turned to go after her then seemed to think better of it, halting and stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his well-worn jeans.

"When's the last time?" Ultear asked his back.

She heard him breathe all of his air out through his nose. "Shut up, Ultear."

"No, seriously. This is what, the seventh time you've been on the outs? When are you two going to finally say _it doesn't fucking work?_ "

He started walking; Ultear followed. Her steps were still clunky, though, and she twisted her ankle. Gray slowed and took her elbow to stabilize her. He didn't let go once he realized just how drunk she was.

To distract him, Ultear asked, "Why now?"

"What?"

"Why'd she storm off now? Did you try to have another threesome?" Gray's annoyance was palpable. Ultear was practically choking on it but she couldn't seem to dull the edge of her knife. "Or did she tell you who you shouldn't be fucking? A good Christian girl like her, your choices must really get under her skin."

"Just leave it."

"I'm worried about you," she said falsely. "She wants you to be vanilla and I know all the filthy things that turn you on."

The back of a car bumped Ultear's behind. Gray stood in front of her, furiousness just pouring off of him. "We weren't here on the same bill. She was trying to pick up in there."

Ultear lay back against the trunk of a blue '76 Malibu to laugh. The flecking paint bit into her coat and she'd likely take some away with her when she stood up again. "That must really burn you up."

"It's not funny. She's really fucked up about this."

Ultear sobered. "That's not my problem."

"'Course not." Gray's phone was ringing, Ultear could hear the warbling tune from his pocket. He picked it out and looked at the screen. "It's your mom."

"Then answer it."

His look turned dry. "We were supposed to be at Nan's half an hour ago. If I answer it, I'll have to tell her where we are and why we're not there."

Dinner. Right. The thought of eating dinner with her family when she felt like this was insane. She couldn't say no, though, her mom would promptly find another place for her to live if so and she couldn't afford to be out on her own. She sat up and fluffed her hair. "How do I look?"

"Like a fucking mess."

She felt it, too.

"Get in."

"This isn't your truck."

"It's my new car."

"It's old."

"It's new to me. Get in."

"Where's your truck?"

"Sitting in my driveway."

"Since when could you afford _two_ vehicles?" Ultear asked suspiciously.

"Mind your own business and get in," Gray said with an authority he very rarely pulled out, at least not for her. She smiled like she was besotted instead of prickly about the whole thing and rolled off the back and and got into the passenger's seat.

The car smelled like Little Trees and old seat fabric. She use the fold down mirror to fix her runny eye makeup and to apply a fresh coat of lip gloss. Her hair was still damp and without a straightener, it was starting to crimp and curl. There was a headband in her purse. She tried to cover up some of her disarray with it.

Gray got into the car and leaned over the seat. Ultear stilled as he fixed it for her, fluffing out the bow and smoothing back a loop in her hair. He took his hand back just as soon as he was done like he was uncomfortable and started the car.

Ultear leaned her head against the window and put her finger in the hole in the seat as they drove, feeling the foam material beneath and the bits of grime Gray hadn't been able to get out. He would have loved this car. He loved a lot of broken things that couldn't be fixed.

* * *

Ultear's grandmother lived in a part of Magnolia crawling with seniors. They all drove respectable cars, nothing too fancy, except for the odd Audi, and nothing too dirt-stack, except for the odd abused Cavalier.

Gardens were mended and porches had chairs on them and when garage doors were lifted, people could actually get _into_ the garage and not just stare at it, wondering how to get around the mess.

Ultear got out of the passenger's seat and was reminded again how very drunk she was. It hadn't gotten much better. If she didn't know better, she'd say she was _given_ something. Something she didn't agree to take.

"Whoa." Gray grabbed her hip to keep her from stumbling off the step. She swayed back against him and promptly shoved off to get upright again.

"Thanks." The door opened before Ultear could grab the knob and the smell of turkey poured out of the quaint neighbourhood home. It smelled _good_ but she didn't know if she was hungry. She couldn't tell.

"Where have you been?" Ur had dressed in her Sunday best, a pencil skirt and a cowl-necked purple shirt that Ultear hated. It was her fake dress, what she put on when she wanted to impress people or make them think that everything was _all right_.

"Out."

Ur dropped her voice. "You stink of booze."

"Yeah, mom."

Ur stood straight and examined her and for an instant, Ultear thought (prayed) she was going to tell her to forget it, to just go on home. But Ur disappeared. She came back with a stick of gum that she gave to Ultear. Ultear put it in her mouth because she could hear her grandmother talking.

Ur smoothed her shirt and stepped back, inviting them in. Ultear kicked off her boots. The snow had turned to rain and she left muddy boot prints on the floor. Her stockinged feet slid over the plush carpet that came after the foyer. She didn't know if she liked the way carpet, stocking and skin felt all mashed together.

She swayed into a wall. Gray was there to help her stand back upright again. "Jesus. Are you okay?" His voice was so, so quiet.

"Fine." Fine. She just needed to sober up.

"There's my favourite girl." Her Nan came around the corner, arms out, and hugged Ultear around the waist. Ultear rested her cheek on her bony shoulder.

"Hey, Nanny."

"And Gray." Her grandmother let Ultear go and took on Gray. As she hugged him, she asked all kinds of questions Ultear knew he didn't want to answer. _How is your girlfriend?_ (Crazy and furious), _How's school going?_ (He dropped out of Police Foundations just as soon as Silver kicked him out) and, _are you helping your sister with her studies?_

Ultear swayed out of the living room and into the kitchen. Silver was there and he was alone. He stood by the counter, not dressed in his cop's uniform but very much fitting the part with one hand slung in his back pocket and his shoulders forward in the casually aggressive way all police officers seemed to have. "Your friend's doing well at the academy, I hear."

"Elfman?" Ultear asked.

"Sure. The big one."

"He's not my friend."

"Your…" he searched for the word.

"We stopped fucking months ago. He's nothing now."

Silver smiled; brashness never bothered him much. "I guess you don't care for updates, then."

"Nope." He was just trying to make her talk, anyway, to see if she was wasted, and now he knew.

"Were you at Macy's again?" he asked.

"So what if I was? It's not illegal and I'm of age."

"Weird people hang out around Macy's."

" _I'm_ the weird people, Silver, the faster you learn that the better." She took a glass of wine from behind him. She didn't need it.

He pursed his lips. "It's not a joke. It wasn't that long ago that Strauss girl went missing."

"She met that guy online, they hooked up, he killed her. He's in jail. End of story." Ultear started back into the living room. Silver grabbed her arm and brought her back around so they were far too close for her liking.

"Sure. I'm just trying to remind you that stuff lives in your backyard. You should remember that." He looked her over head-to-toe as he spoke, reminding Ultear that she didn't like Silver. She didn't like the way he dipped out on her mom once every few months without so much as a goodbye, she didn't like the stream of female callers he had (a cop didn't need to give out his personal information _so_ much,) and she didn't like the way he studied her. It wasn't anything extra overt, he was just a man used to getting what he wanted, and he sized up everything he even remotely fantasized about the _exact same way_.

She thought the right circumstances, a little bit of pressure, he could cast aside his morals and bend. Every man could.

Gray came into the kitchen and grabbed a shrimp from the shrimp ring. "What's going on?"

"I was just telling your sister she needs to be a little more careful."

Ultear grabbed a shrimp herself and tuned him out. She kept it up all throughout dinner, too. She had to sit on the opposite side of the table, next to Gray, but she kept her head up and her eyes pointed defiantly _away_ from where Silver had his arm slung around her mother's shoulder, like he didn't _just_ come crawling back out of the woodwork after a four-month stint of being absent from their doorstep.

Nanny poured gravy on her turkey and asked, "Ultear, how's your schooling going?"

It was Ur that answered because Ultear's thoughts were as thick as that gravy. "Great, everything's just great."

Her nanny acted like her mother hadn't spoken. "Do you find the tests hard?"

"Um..."

"All of her classes are easy for her," Ur responded in such a way that Ultear knew she was ashamed. The shame made her angry and vengeful, so when her Nan asked,

"All of them?"

Ultear responded with, "They're pretty easy when you don't go."

"Ultear." Her mother's voice was like a car crash, short, abrupt and startling. Ultear kept on her course when her nan asked,

"What do you mean? You don't go?"

"I dropped out."

Ur scrambled to save face. "She took a break."

"Forever."

"Not forever. She was stressed out. Next year—"

"I won't apply again, mom. I don't like it." It was her grandmother's money that paid for it all, but here she was, throwing it away. She felt gross. And put on the spot.

"What are you going to do then?"

"I don't know."

"You're twenty. You need to have a plan."

"Twenty's not that old," Ultear said. "Lots of people don't know what they're doing at twenty."

"When I was your age I already had your mother and a career working in the hospital—"

"That was like, a hundred years ago, Nan. Things are different," Ultear exaggerated in her very best snotty tone.

"Don't speak to your Nan that way," Silver said, and Ultear was suddenly furious. She strangled the life out of her napkin but couldn't stop the fountain of words.

"Who are you even, Silver? You don't get to have a say in how I speak to anyone. You're just some douche my mom brings home sometimes, even after you fuck around on her."

There was a shocked silence that went around the table. Ultear stood before anyone else could figure out what to say and excused herself, retreating not out the door, as she should have, but to the bathroom, because she was so livid, she couldn't think straight.

She leaned her palms on the counter and stared into the bottom of the sink, just like Beverly did in IT, right before the voices floated up and told her, _come play with us, Beverly_. Ultear didn't believe in ghosts or dimensional demons that came from the Waste Lands, but she thought if she heard a voice asking her that just then, she'd do it. She'd climb on down there to the sewer so she didn't have to walk out past everyone and out the front door.

Someone rapped on the door. Ultear rolled her eyes into the back of her head and sighed quietly. Maybe she could ignore it?

The door slid open and Gray invited himself in. Ultear turned on him and hissed, "I'm in the fucking bathroom."

"Staring into the sink." Gray closed the door behind himself and leaned against it.

"I'm still in the bathroom."

He was unfazed. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

"Because you never yell around your nan, you're drunk and I don't know where you've been all day."

"You don't need to know where I've been all day."

"No. But wherever you were, you're messed up and you look rattled about it."

She _was_ rattled. The closer to sober she got, the more fucked up everything seemed, to the point where she didn't recognize her earlier actions and couldn't place the entire day together.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"You can tell me, Ultear."

To what end? She'd have to admit she got into someone's car, that she took his alcohol and got drugged, and then was paid _. Paid._ She felt gross about that, too.

"Just had kind of a shitty day." From what she could remember of it, anyway.

"What happened?"

She sighed and draped herself on his shoulder. It'd confuse him, but she didn't care. She wanted to mislead him and this was the best way she knew how. "I saw Angel by the dam on my way home from work and she was running her big fucking mouth."

Gray draped his hands around her hips. Ultear looked at them in the mirror. She liked the black of her hair against the black of his. They were pretty together. "Why's she got it out for you?"

"Don't know. She's secretly in love with me?" Ultear half-joked. Gray didn't laugh.

"Why were you drinking in the park?"

"I wasn't," she said. "That came after."

"I didn't see you at Macy's." It was one of the only places in Magnolia _to_ drink.

She cleared her throat. "I wasn't there."

"So where were you?"

"Does that matter?"

"I don't know—"

"The answer's no. I don't owe you any explanation. That's it."

Gray knew her well; if he kept pushing, she'd close down on him, so he let it go. "Do you want a ride home?"

"Is your dad going to be pissed if you leave?"

"He's always pissed at me," Gray said. "The only reason I'm here is because of your mom."

True enough; their relationship was strained. At the very least. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah. Take me home."

Gray opened the door but Ultear walked out first. There was no one waiting to bombard her, she could hear her mother and her grandmother speaking softly in the dining room. Ur only let her voice get to that pitch when she was talking about Ultear.

Ultear held her head high and walked briskly—but not too brisk, so it seemed like she was running—through the house to the front door. Gray was lagging behind her. She didn't stop to see why, throwing open the door and coming out into the cigarette-smelling night.

Ultear put the bottom of the steps in her sights but Silver pulled out his Cop Voice and stopped her dead in her tracks just by uttering her name. She turned back around and found him under the porch lamp. Pale light made the white in his hair glitter.

"You hurt your mom's feelings. You should apologize to her."

"If I did that, Silver, it'd kind of be like apologizing for you, and the thought of doing that makes me sick."

He was collected as he delivered, "You don't know what your mom and me have going on."

"Whatever it is, it's a fucking joke." She spun on her heel and got down the rest of the steps just as the door behind her opened and Gray followed her out. He didn't say a word to his father; Ultear expected no less but she still felt vindicated, leaving Silver there with almost no satisfaction.

Gray drove her home in silence, and when they pulled into the driveway, Ultear maintained the status quo. She was halfway up the driveway, in the wash of his headlights when he turned off the car and followed her in.

Ultear showered firstly, leaving Gray to loiter in the house that he once lived in for a short time. When she was clean, she wrapped herself in her favourite purple towel and came back out. The house was still dark; Gray hadn't bothered with any lights; neither did Ultear.

He sat on her bed, illuminated by the odd peach-orange shade of a streetlight coming through her window. It was bright enough that Ultear could see the way he looked at her. She wanted it to be with less concern and with more heat. She took the edge of her towel and started tugging on it. His eyes were glued to her but his mouth was somewhere else, telling her,

"Sorry he's such a fuckup with your mom. And that he's always butting into your business."

"Sh." She didn't want to talk about Silver. Ultear held her towel, now open but tight to her chest, and leaned in. Gray kissed her the way he always kissed her. Haltingly. That was ninety percent of the fun, no lie. The first time she did this was five years ago. They were fifteen and coming home from a bush party, and cicadas were humming and the grass was warm beneath her bare toes. She'd been thinking about it all night but waited until they were under a footbridge to do it.

He kissed her back but didn't talk to her for a week afterwards. She loved passing him in the hallways at school especially because he squirmed in front of his friends, but also at home. He'd look her over quickly but always get stuck on her lips and she knew without a doubt he was thinking about what she did.

It took almost two weeks for him to say something to her again and when he did, it was something simple, _pass the milk._ She never forgot, though, because that marked the moment they could start to do it all over again. Ultear took it a step further each time, a touch, a caress, over the clothes and then under, then without clothes at all, until Gray was such a fucking mess and she had all the power.

"We said last time was the last time."

" _You_ said it was."

"We agreed." Gray spoke but he was touching the bottom of her towel. She wanted him to touch _her._ She wanted someone other than her last partner to think about.

"You agreed, I told you that it was stupid and that you and Juvia would be broken up again by the end of the week. And I was right."

"She's jealous of you."

"Or she's ashamed." Ultear knew it had been a mistake to lean over and whisper in Juvia's ear what she and Gray had done, but she couldn't stand the three in the morning texts or the dramatic fits of jealousy, Gray's mood swings or all the times he blew her off to hang out with Juvia, leaving her home when his father would come back after Silver had ditched that flavour of the week and wanted her mother back.

What happened with Juvia after Ultear spilled her and Gray's secret was just a misguided attempt at being involved in Gray's life that Ultear did nothing to correct. That was a poor decision that ended with tears halfway through, though it did, actually, end up working out in Gray's favour. Juvia left him.

Gray's palms touched the outsides of Ultear's hips. Ultear started to pull aside the towel. His throat bobbed and his eyes dropped down so he could watch. Finally, he stopped wearing his concern and started wearing his shame.

She let the towel drop. It landed with a poof that stirred the dust beneath her bed. She stepped away from it and closer to Gray. His fingers moved from her hips to her behind. He grabbed her just lightly; it was enough to give her a thrill. She got closer, close enough he couldn't ignore her. His mouth pressed to the place between and below her breasts. She held in her sigh so it could build to something that resembled desire and not relief.

His fingers tightened and his tongue came out. He used his contact points to pull her back on the bed. Ultear adjusted for him, climbing up; she knew he liked it when she would get on top of him, when her thighs were pressing into his cheeks and she was pinning him down with her weight on his chest.

She reached back and grabbed the hem of his shirt; the material was soft and well-worn, loved to the very end, like his Malibu. In turn, Gray pulled her forward. She could say whatever she wanted about him, he was patient with his tongue and patience was the key. Steady, steady, steady had her coming after just minutes. She let go of his shirt so she could grab his hair and pull him closer.

He kept on until she released him and inched back far enough that she could get his shirt up and off his back, and then his pants, too. Regardless of his complaints, vocal or otherwise, he was ready and willing, watching her unclasp his pants and take him out, and groaning when Ultear used just the tip of her nail to scrape over the tip of his cock.

"Do you want me to kiss it?" She liked to hear him say it.

"Yes."

"And lick it?"

"Yes."

"And suck it?"

"Yes." He was sounding more and more desperate. Ultear smiled.

"What if I just fucked it?"

Gray took her hand and pulled her towards him. Ultear allowed for it, like she allowed for him to grab a fistful of hair and push her down. She liked to tease him and kissed around the base and lower, using her tongue and her teeth and her lips, never giving him _exactly_ what he wanted but _almost_. Pleasure quickly turned to frustration; he throbbed and tried to pull her back up and position at her mouth and she decided that she'd had enough being manhandled.

Ultear straightened and pushed his hands aside. Gray made a noise and reached for her, just needing _something_. She relished it. She relished pushing him back and climbing back onto the bed and she relished sliding down on top of his cock. She relished the way he came alive for her, pushing his hips up and arching his spine. She relished the way he tried, really, really tried to make her feel good as if he spent _so much time_ thinking about all the little ways he could do that. He touched her too much and each finger fall meant more than it was supposed to. Ultear lived for it. She wanted to leave a mark; she didn't think it was Gray she wanted to carve into, but he sat still for her blade.

* * *

Sometime around three-thirty that morning, Ultear's phone hummed. She rolled over in her now-empty bed and picked it up. It was Flare, asking her if she wanted to hang out that weekend. She said yes.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I should mention this story happens _after_ Stars in the Sky.

* * *

The liquor on your lips makes you dangerous

* * *

Saturday marked a break in the dreary spring weather. The snow was totally gone and she could convince herself that the warmth was going to last. She chose a dress for her night out. It was light blue and had black hearts stenciled on the tulle bottom. There was a white belt around her waist. There were no sleeves. She put on a pair of fishnets under them, ones with heart-shaped patterns in the netting. Over that went a pair of tall boots, lace-up because Ultear didn't believe in comfort concessions for fashion.

She grabbed her sunglasses before she left her room and put them on her head. They were her favourite pair, large and heart-shaped. They were red because her skin was pale and her hair was black and there was nothing she loved more than contrast. It made her stand out from a crowd of girls that were just exactly like each other. She was no Barbie and she didn't want to be one, either. She wanted to be like no one else.

Her look complete, she came downstairs and tried to slip out the front door but Silver was there in the foyer drinking his coffee as if he were waiting for her.

"Don't you have to work?" Ultear asked.

"I'm done already," he replied.

"Lucky you."

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"I know that. Where?"

"Why do you care?" She didn't have to be so difficult, but she _wanted_ to be. Just because it pissed him off.

"Because your mom's worried about you after how you came home the other day," he said bluntly.

She bit the inside of her cheek. She wasn't a bratty kid anymore but she wanted to be. "I'm going to _Tartarus."_

"A girl got roofied there last weekend."

Ultear pushed away thoughts of dank showers with hard tiles, of the man giving her money for sex, of Flare kissing her cheek afterwards and asking, _'What's your name?'_ "Then I'll be sure not to take drinks from strangers," she responded.

"That's what every girl says."

"I'm not every fucking girl."

"That's right. You're our girl."

Like he had the right to say stuff like that. Anger tried to make her blind. "Stop patronizing me. I don't have _victim_ written on my forehead."

"No, but you're not exactly cautious," Silver said.

She'd never been, that was true. She didn't like Silver telling her that, though, if only because it came out of his mouth. She pushed past him and snagged her coat from the closet. The red length covered her dress; she put her sunglasses on and started down the stairs but paused half-way. Something was missing.

"Where's my car?"

"It's your mom's car and she had to take it to work." He sounded so superior.

"You usually drive her."

"I had court today, I couldn't."

Ultear faced him. "Why didn't she tell me?"

"She did, the other night at your Nan's."

Ultear didn't remember that at all. Her mother probably knew that, and so did Silver. They were trying to make a point and she very much didn't appreciate it. "She could have mentioned it."

"And you could have shown up sober."

Ultear felt like screaming. She buried it all down with great effort and smiled instead. "That's fine. It's her car, after all."

Silver offered, "I'll drive you if you want."

No, she did not, thank you. "I got it."

"Be safe."

"Always." She felt him watching her all the way down the driveway and down the street, too, until she turned the corner and he could see her no longer.

At first, Ultear didn't think she had a plan, but that was a lie. She did the same thing she always did when Silver pissed her off. She went to Gray's because that was what would goad Silver the most. She wasn't sure if it was because he didn't really speak to his son or if it was because she thought he suspected that they were fucking, but it made him mad and so it made Ultear happy.

The Patch was far enough away that by the time she got there, she was hot in her coat and her feet let her know in no uncertain terms that her boots were not walking shoes.

Ultear circumvented the doorbell and invited herself in. Gray had music on; he almost always did. It was System of a Down today, Serj Tankian quietly telling her, _dreams are made winding through my head._ He was moody but he wasn't _angry._ So she supposed he was feeling like himself.

Ultear stepped around a case of water and a case of beer in the hallway and came into the living room. She found her step-brother immediately. He was leaning back on the couch and zipping up his pants. His shirt was gone and so was Cana's, though Cana had found hers and was yanking it up over her arms.

"Jesus, Ultear," Gray said when he saw her. "What the fuck?" He sounded startled and adrenalized like he was on the verge of getting violent with the intruder in his house before he realized it was her.

"Hi." Ultear sat her glasses on her head and pretended not to be bothered that Cana was there. They hadn't spoken since the Lucy debacle and Ultear wasn't keen on finding out what Cana thought of her after that. It had been a rotten moment in a lifetime of them, though that one was more pitted than the rest. Cana had cut right to her heart with very little effort and Ultear was still knotting up loose pieces so she didn't catch feelings.

"Text me or something," Cana told Gray as she yanked on her leather jacket. She pulled her hair from its collar and Ultear was thrown seven months into the past, when Cana had first moved into the Patch and Ultear used to absently-not-so-absently slide those locks through her fingers.

Cana had been fun.

She mashed the fuck out of those thoughts and kept her eyes trained on Gray so she didn't have to watch Cana leave. Cana's eyes flitted to hers as she passed. Ultear tried to read her expression without moving. She couldn't do it.

The front door opened and closed again and they were alone. Gray grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table. "Why do you just invite yourself into my house?"

"You always leave the door unlocked. I have to assume that's for me." Ultear put as much of her flirty nonchalance into her words as possible.

Gray shook his head and lit his smoke. "What's up?"

Ultear came in the rest of the way and dropped down onto the couch. It was still warm and smelled like body spray. Vanilla, she thought. "I need you to drive me to _Tartarus_."

"When?"

"In like, an hour," she said.

"I have stuff to do tonight."

"It looks like she just walked out of your house." Ultear forced a catty smile.

"Real stuff. I have a delivery I have to make."

"A delivery? What are you, some kind of pizza man now?" Ultear cackled.

"Car parts," Gray told her. "Cana hooked me up with her garage; they needed a driver."

"Did she _also_ hook you up with that new car?" Gray's silence spoke volumes. Ultear asked, "What kind of shop delivers once the sun's gone down, huh?"

"I never asked."

That was some shady shit, they both knew it. Wouldn't Silver be proud? Ultear plucked the cigarette out of his hand and drew on it. "So deliver and then drop me off. Or drop me off on your way and pick me up when you're done."

Gray took the cigarette back from her. "What if I wanted to do something tonight?"

"Cana never fucks the same guy twice in a day," Ultear clawed. "No worries."

"You feeling a little tetchy, Ultear?" Gray asked dryly.

"Nope, just thought I'd tell you how it is before you get roped in by her, too."

"Too?"

"You _always_ have unrealistic goals. First, there was Erza."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Yeah, remember how you used to give her Valentines cards every year with fucking gross mushy stuff on it but you were never brave enough to sign your name?"

Gray's neck reddened some. "I was like, ten. And you ruined that by telling her I ate dog food."

"You were twelve, and someone had to spill the beans. But then there was Sherry. Remember her?" Ultear did. She'd laugh and laugh and laugh like she was happy and then race into the bathroom to throw up her dinner and cut herself.

"You chased her off."

"Because she was a lunatic. When you finally figured out how fucked up she was, you moved onto fucking sighing about Angel."

"Which you _also_ fucked up."

"You should be _thanking_ me for that."

"Thanking you for fucking up every relationship I've ever had?"

"Yes. Because after Angel—"

"There was _you_ ," Gray interjected with a bite in his tone.

Ultear snagged the burning out cigarette from him again. "I was going to say then there was Juvia but you're right, I'm in between there, aren't I?" His expression was dark and Ultear delighted in it. "Gray's dirty fucking secret. And _then_ came Juvia. Was she supposed to be the nice girl you brought home to Daddy?"

His fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles were white. "Why do you do this shit?"

Because it was easy. "I'm just reminding you that she had a doll made with your face on it."

Gray unclenched his fists so he could light another cigarette. The smoke choked the apartment. Ultear delighted in that, too. He only ever chain smoked when she was getting under his skin. When he opened his mouth, though, it wasn't to yell at her. He said, "It wasn't that bad."

Ultear dropped her spent cigarette into one of Gray's empty beer bottles. It sizzled out in the centimetre of liquid. "Pardon?"

"It wasn't."

"You came home that night to tell me how fucked up it was," she reminded him. "And then…"

"I _know_ what happened afterwards, you don't have to remind me."

But she liked to relive it. He never fucked her as well as when he was feeling anxious and guilty and totally at war with himself. "It was fun."

"It was wrong."

"And that's why it was fun."

"You're fucked."

"Then we both are."

"You're the instigator."

"So what? You still participate."

"I'm done."

In contradiction, she spread her legs a little and skimmed the inside of her thigh. Gray watched her from beneath his lashes, cigarette in his mouth. He was wearing his conflicted face and she loved it. She spread her legs a bit more and touched a bit higher. It always felt nice when she touched herself but never as nice as when he was watching her.

"Stop it, Ultear." There was no _command_ behind his voice; it was Gray's way of daring her to continue.

"No." She dared and leaned back on his couch and spread her legs wider. He positioned himself so he could see her more clearly; he probably wasn't even aware of the movement. His tongue was tucked into his cheek contemplatively; his cigarette burned down between his calloused fingers. Ultear pressed in between her legs, through her tights, and slowly, gently, rubbed. He let it continue like she knew he would. She bowed her back and made a small noise of pleasure just for him.

"I hate you." His dick was hard; she could see its outline through his jeans. She'd sort of been fucking with him before but everything got a little more enticing after that.

"No, you don't."

Gray dropped his cigarette right on the wood of the coffee table and leaned forward. His mouth pressed against the inside of her knee, and then her thigh. Ultear hoped that when he looked at the burn mark in the future, it reminded him of her.

His tongue was hot but its wetness was delayed with her tights in the way. For some reason, that made it better. When he got right between her legs, she spread as wide for him as she could and watched his tongue press flat against her. His breath came through first, searing, and then the warm wetness. She didn't think she'd like it as much with material between them but it made her focus on everything more and because of that, she could pick out the nuances. He never went too fast or too hard, though he gripped her ass hard enough, she was going to be bruised.

Gray lifted her hips and swiped his thumb over her underneath his tongue, pressing against her opening in a maddening way. Ultear arched her hips, forcing him to press harder. He backed off. Frustration welled up inside of her, the kind that let itself out in a needy moan. That seemed to be what he was waiting for. His mouth locked around her completely, his tongue sliding solidly against her. She was soaked now and Gray knew what she liked. Ultear orgasmed the kind of orgasm that left her muscles twitchy and weak.

Gray pulled away and picked up his cigarette again. It was still burning, though it was almost finished now. "I'll drop you off on my way by."

She wouldn't ask him to fuck her; that would be too much like he won. Ultear sat up and straightened her clothing. She'd be wet between her legs for a while; she didn't mind.

* * *

Flare waited for Ultear outside of the nightclub, a smoothie in her hand, the straw in her mouth. She was in a black V-necked T-shirt dress that read number seven on the front. She watched Gray's truck, and then Gray, not breaking eye contact with him until Ultear stepped out of the vehicle and closed the door, blocking her view.

She popped the bubble gum she'd been smacking and flashed Ultear a bright smile that didn't reach all the way to her eyes. That was part of the reason Ultear liked her, she supposed. She was insincere. "Hey."

"Is that one of your friends?"

"My brother." Ultear sneered the word though Gray wasn't around to hear it.

"Oh." Flare smiled a little brighter. "I thought it was your boyfriend or something."

"Who the fuck has the time for a boyfriend?" Especially when girls were that much more fun.

"Agreed." Flare linked their arms and turned them towards the club. Ultear's steps faltered. Angel stood by the front door, handing off a small package of something to the bouncer. Ultear would bet her entire paycheque that it was pills.

Her hair was crimped like a Victoria's Secret model, her body showing through cut-outs in her black and red hatched dress. She looked nasty, a mean girl through and through, and fantastic. She narrowed in on Ultear like a wasp on a fly and moved in front of the bouncer.

"Oh, Ultear." She practically simpered her name. "Did you hear? Tonight is No Sluts night."

"Guess you should go home, then," Ultear quipped.

Angel's smile grew. "Funny. Hey, I meant to ask you how Zeref was."

"He's in jail, Angel. How the fuck am I to know?"

"I thought you were his biggest fan. It seemed that way, anyway, the way you'd hang off his side, though he told you he wasn't fucking interested."

What bothered her most about that was that it was true. Ultear clenched her fists at her sides and imagined, not for the first time, hitting Angel. She was a little wearier after being arrested with Natsu those months ago, though. Angel knew it, too, and always exploited that.

Flare wasn't as concerned. She let her smoothie drop from her hands and when it hit the ground, it splashed up Angel's legs and over her high heels. Angel looked at the mess in disbelief. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Oops." Flare laughed. It sounded slightly unhinged.

The bouncer spoke up. "I think that's enough, ladies. Miss Corona, if you would." He waved Flare towards the inside.

"You're not letting her in after that," Angel swiped. "Tell them to fuck off."

The bouncer's lips pressed together. He remained stoic. Flare took up Ultear's hand and pulled her close. She smelled like nutmeg and sticky smoothie. Ultear heard Angel said, "Why the fuck are you letting them in _?_ " She looked back and saw the bouncer had blocked her entry into the club and was explaining to her something in a low voice.

Ultear asked Flare, "Do you know that guy? Why did he call you Miss?"

Flare whispered to her, "Daddy owns the club."

"Your dad does?"

She lifted her shoulder an inch. "He's not _really_ my dad, but he likes it when I call him that."

Ultear pushed aside some streamers and stepped into a dark hallway. She could see lights from the club's innards bursting through another set of streamers that separated the main part of the building from the entryway with its bathrooms and water fountains. "How do you know him?"

"He was a friend of my family. I live with him."

"You do? Why?"

"My mom had cancer when I was little and then when she died, my dad was sad and—" She mimed putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger. "It was a mess." She said it all with very little emotion, never raising her voice above the loudening throb of music. "So I moved in with Ivan and everything's better now." She laughed again. Unhinged. Again.

Ultear shivered.

"We get everything for free here. The bartender knows me and the bouncers never check me, so it's not like I have to hide Molly up my cunt. I saw a girl do that once, you know? I walked into the bathroom and she had her leg up on the counter and her friend was helping her. They didn't care when I walked in. People are fucked, did you know that?"

"Yeah," Ultear mumbled. Totally fucked.

"If you don't want that girl in here again, I can make that happen," Flare said.

"Angel?"

"You hate her, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Then so do I." She smiled widely and pushed aside the final set of streamers and the music poured in around them.

 _Tartarus_ was like every other nightclub Ultear had ever been in. Loud, seizure-inducing.

Flare dragged her to the bar where the bartender poured them drinks without asking for payment, just like Flare said. Ultear sucked back three big mouthfuls and whatever had been bothering her inched back a few steps.

Flare asked, "Who is Zeref?"

"A guy I used to know," Ultear said.

"An old boyfriend?"

She sighed. "Things were complicated."

"How?"

She was sure Flare would hear it anyway if she asked literally anyone. "He fucked around a lot with other girls." With Angel. Though Ultear supposed she _was_ fucking his brother, so all was fair. "And then when I was fucking fed up with him and thought nothing was ever going to happen, he decides that he wants to fuck. And then—" she laughed and sounded unhinged herself. "He killed someone." Zeref _killed_ someone. She still couldn't wrap her head around that _completely_. He killed someone with the same hands he used to touch her. "I sound insane."

"Did you ever watch _The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus?_ "

"I hate that movie. Doctor Parnassus is a fucking pig. And then Valentina _gave_ herself over to Mister Nick."

Flare smile softened. "That's what men do to girls like us. They make us do crazy things."

Ultear finished her drink and got another and that little seed of unease shut up completely.

* * *

They danced until Ultear was dizzy. She changed partners often, sidling in with a tall, blonde brute who didn't look like he was there for the scene, and then a small, lithe girl with pink hair. She was replaced by a guy Ultear was _pretty_ sure she'd kissed before but couldn't remember his name. She returned for Flare always, though, because Flare always seemed to be _right there_.

She was drinking again and shared it with Ultear. It was supposed to be a mixed drink but the bartender had given them mostly vodka. It made Ultear's throat burn in not an entirely pleasant way. "That's gross."

"Do you want to try something better?"

"What?"

Flare reached between her breasts and pulled out a small golden bottle. Once she drank from it, her lips and tongue turned the same colour.

"What is it?"

"Salvia."

She'd never had it before but had heard plenty about it. Ultear shrugged noncommittally and took it from her. It tasted like chemical and almost immediately twisted her down a weird rabbit hole with decaying sides.

Music throbbed in her ear, separate. Lights bounced off her skin, they had weight. Flare laughed in her ear. She was frenzied. Ultear suddenly was, too. Laughter bubbled up in her chest and burst its way out and she was afraid her body was breaking apart. She clutched her torso, all at once afraid, and felt wetness. She was bleeding. She was fucking bleeding. She was screaming and bleeding and Flare was laughing and there was a raven overtop of her, pinning her down, watching her bleed out, watching—

" _Stop_." His voice punched through her. Ultear blinked. The walls got stiffer. Her chest stopped feeling so open. The music stopped trying to eat her alive. She was on _Tartarus's_ floor and she was wet, not with blood but with alcohol. She could smell it. She'd had a drink and she spilled it on herself and Gray was standing above of her.

He crouched and lifted her up, his arms behind her back and beneath her legs. He held her against him until Ultear could get her feet under her and then he loosened his grip, but not by much. That was just _fine._ She was unsteady and clutched his shirt like a lifeline. She found Flare over Gray's shoulder. Her eyes were hard and narrow and her mouth was like a gold-tinged papercut. Her expression morphed and she looked concerned.

"Are you okay?"

"She was on the fucking floor, screaming," Gray said. They'd drawn attention; people were staring. Ultear's chest and cheeks were hot.

"It's just Salvia. She's sober now. Come on, Ultear." Flare held out her hand. Ultear stared at it. "Come _on_."

Ultear's throat was raw. "I want to go home." Salvia had not been as fun as she was hoping and she was soaked in alcohol and totally wrung out.

"Then I'll walk you home," Flare offered.

"I'll drive her," Gray said.

"Ultear?"

"I'll just get the drive," she said.

Flare looked like she'd been smacked in the face. Ultear turned from her and Gray helped her towards the door. His Malibu was in the back of the parking lot. There were a few people around to watch them leave. Ultear didn't look at any of their faces and didn't listen to them speak, though she was sure that the ones that were whispering were whispering about her.

Gray opened the car door and helped her inside. He even tried to do up her seatbelt for her. Ultear took it from him and did it herself, though she didn't protest when he drove her back to his place instead of her mom's, or when he helped her off with her clothes and waited for her to shower. She didn't protest, either, when instead of offering her his couch, he made room for her on the bed, kicking his discarded clothes onto the floor. Ultear climbed in and dreamed of gold-tinged papercuts.


	3. Chapter 3

I'm glamorous,

Famous,

Notorious,

Dangerous, but I'm crazy

* * *

Ultear didn't immediately recognize the stucco ceiling overhead, and she didn't know the sheets she was wrapped in. There was an arm around her waist, though, and she knew that tattoo, a partial sleeve that stretched to the owner's bicep, sharp lines that didn't mean much of anything to Ultear. She liked them, though, even if they were cliché.

She stayed where she was for a few minutes, listening to Gray breathe and waiting to see what he'd do. He was awake and if she had to guess, he knew she was awake, too. He pressed against her body and Ultear felt his eyes on her. He was thinking, and he was thinking hard. Probably about all the stuff he always told her they shouldn't be thinking about. He was the one that always broke that stupid rule. She just did it, no thinking, no guilt.

The baseboard heater clicked on and Ultear's nose got dry and her skin got hot. She backed away from the edge of the bed and further into Gray. He sat up. Whatever moment had been there was gone. Ultear stopped pretending, too.

His palm was flat against her stomach and he was almost flat against her back. There was a bit of space between their hips, though not enough that she didn't know he enjoyed starting his mornings this way. She wondered what would have happened if their parents hadn't met those years ago. She probably would have passed him by, a conquest at most. His availability to her cultivated bad behaviour. For them both. Gray couldn't seem to stop entertaining her whims, even at the cost of hurting people he said he cared about.

His hand lifted mostly off her stomach so now the only points of contact were the tips of his fingers, making everything just a little less intimate. "How are you feeling?"

Like she'd taken too many pills and drunk not enough water. "I've had better mornings." And she'd had worse. "I don't think I like Salvia."

Whenever he was debating on saying a thing, he always pinched his cheek between his teeth. Ultear prepared herself for it; Gray was always good at saying the hard things, being blunt when most people would shy away or just let a thing go, he just had to work up to it. "That girl you were with is crazy."

There it was.

"Are you really qualified to make that statement?" Ultear asked without much conviction.

Gray rolled his eyes. "She's not crazy in the same way Juvia is crazy. She's like… rabid dog crazy."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because when I picked you up last night, I thought she was going to fucking bite me," he assessed.

Ultear thought about Flare's hard, cold eyes and about her soundly miming a gun and delivering, _it was a mess_. She flopped back onto Gray's bed. He looked down at her through his lashes and his expression was difficult to read.

"What?"

"You know she's trouble."

"I know she threw her smoothie at Angel last night and that she banned Angel from entering _Tartarus_ again. Her dad owns the club."

"And you know she's trouble."

Ultear sighed. "Probably." You didn't meet nice girls in the back of strangers' cars, did you? But Ultear didn't know if she wanted to meet a nice girl. Nice girls were boring.

Someone knocked on Gray's front door, the sound coming through the townhouse. He checked his bedside clock. Ultear followed his gaze. It was eleven thirty. "That's Cana."

Speaking of not nice girls. "Why is she here?"

"To pay me for last night."

"Okay, you're giving me advice about crazy girls but you're taking third-party payment for driving 'car parts' for Cana's garage? Do you know how fucked up that is?" Would it have mattered if it was someone else coming to pay him? Natsu or… well, she didn't think she knew anyone anymore that was into that crap, so Natsu would do.

"I checked the boxes," Gray told her. "They were calipers and brake pads, timing belts. Nothing shady."

"Well, they passed your keen inspection, that must mean they're fine," she said sarcastically.

Gray's door sounded again. He threw off the blankets and climbed over her. He wasn't as nude as she was, in a pair of shorts. His fingers brushed by her waist like he couldn't help but touch to get out of his bed. She saw through his ruse; she saw through all of his ruses. No one knew Gray like she did, not after living together for ten years. Which was frustrating and refreshing all at once. She didn't have to pretend with him, but she liked to.

Ultear watched him get dressed without covering herself again, one hand over her head, the other tossed over her stomach. He glanced at her one last time before exiting the room, the expression on his face not quite a smile and not quite a grimace.

She listened to him tromp down the stairs and yank open the front door. She listened to Cana come in. Vaguely, she wondered if she'd try to fuck him again. And she wondered if that bothered her. And then she wondered if it did bother her, for which reasons was she so bothered? Was it over Cana's participation, or Gray's? Or was it both and was she just feeling snubbed and left out?

She pushed away from those questions and got up. Her dress from last night was ruined and she had no other clothes there. She helped herself to Gray's closet. He had a red and black long-sleeved plaid shirt. When she let it drop over her head, it fell to her thighs. Short but long enough, probably. She used the belt from her dress and put it around her middle, then put on her tights again, too. She rolled up her old clothes in a tight ball and descended the stairs.

Cana was alone in the kitchen, sliding her finger over the rim of a coffee cup. She looked up at Ultear and Ultear couldn't help but look at her; all of yesterday's pretending was gone out the window.

"Hey." No one could say Cana was a coward.

No one would say Ultear was, either, then. "Hey."

Cana pushed her hair back over her shoulder. She had a tattoo on her wrist now. Ultear couldn't see it in its entirety but it was a tattoo she'd seen before, on various people hanging around Zeref's place. "How's your dad feel about you being a part of Raven Tail?"

Cana smiled. "He doesn't really bother me about anything I do."

Which led Ultear to think maybe meddling Gildarts didn't know. If he did, he'd never let Cana continue. Though how did one get out of a gang once they got in?

They stood there for a moment, looking at each other and not talking, Ultear with a bad feeling in her stomach and Cana looking haughty and daring. Ultear didn't have Natsu there to pass along all of her concern so she took the dare and did it herself. "Those guys are the real deal."

"I know what they are."

Did she? Ultear searched her eyes, trying to see if Cana understood. Zeref was friends with them and he'd killed someone, and Zeref, she thought, though unpredictable, had things that he cared about in this world. A lot of those people in Raven Tail had nothing. They cared about nothing and therefore would do anything. Cana had never been good at taking advice, though, so Ultear said, "As long as you know. You know best."

She put the door in her sights. Cana called her back. "I saw you last night." Ultear closed her eyes and wished Cana would stop. "You were at _Tartarus_. With a girl. With red hair."

"Yeah."

"Flare," Cana surprised her by saying.

Ultear turned back again. "You know her?"

Cana drummed her fingers uncomfortably against her coffee cup. "We met one night at Fairy Tail. She had China White. It's—"

"Heroin," Ultear supplied. "Yeah."

"And things got out-of-hand. Like, crazy fucking out-of-hand. And she freaked out and hit me." She stopped her story there, seemingly less capable of telling her to be careful than Ultear was.

"Thanks," Ultear said. Her phone chimed, though, and she discovered that she wasn't going to be able to avoid Flare as well as she thought she could. Flare had her wallet and her keys, she'd dropped them on _Tartarus'_ floor last night and Flare had picked them up.

Under Flare's text was one from her mother. Ultear messaged her back and told her she was at Gray's. Ur went silent after that. She liked Gray. Sometimes, Ultear thought she liked him better than she liked Silver and maybe that was why she kept letting Silver back in her life. If she wanted Gray around, though, she could have just told him. She didn't have to make excuses.

Gray entered. His eyes clung to Ultear for longer than what was likely appropriate. His expression was near-unreadable, though she thought the cause for his hesitance was her wearing his shirt. She thought he liked it and hated it all at once. Good. That's how she preferred their relationship to be.

Cana finished her coffee and handed Gray a piece of paper from her pocket. "If you have any questions, call me."

"Sure." He took the note from her and put it in his jeans pocket.

Cana started backing out of the kitchen. Last-second, she mumbled, "I'll see you around. Ultear." And then she was gone.

Gray raised a single eyebrow. "You're friends again?"

"No." She changed the subject. "Can you drive me home?"

"Can't, I have another delivery," Gray said distractedly. He lit a cigarette and started messing with his coffee maker.

"I thought that was a nighttime venture?"

"Guess it's an anytime venture," he responded.

"Just drop me off on your way by again."

"It's on the other side of town."

Ultear drummed her fingers on the counter, a small seed of annoyance sprouting.

Gray suggested a little too casually, "You can stay here until I get back."

"How long are you going to be?"

"A few hours?" he said but Ultear knew he didn't really know.

"I'll just walk."

"It's cold out again."

"That's fine." Being a little cold was better than sitting in his house, doing nothing for three hours _waiting_ for him. She didn't wait for anyone, least of all Gray.

"When are you coming back?" Gray surprised her by asking.

Ultear smiled a lion's smile. "Who said I was?"

"Me, because you need to bring my shirt back."

"I thought maybe I'd keep it," she played.

"I like that shirt."

She leaned back against the counter and tugged up the hem a few inches. It didn't have far to go before he was looking at the place her underwear was supposed to be. He tried to be nonchalant; his pants made a liar out of him, though. "And you like the way it looks on me."

He put a cup under the coffee maker and pressed the Run button. He looked back at her. "If your mom's done with her car, you can bring it back tonight."

That was as good as a Fullbuster invitation. Ultear didn't know if she wanted to be invited by him to do anything. "I'll think about it." She left him to look after her while she pulled on her boots and left his house. She texted Flare when she was outside in the bitter air and asked for her address. When she had it, she plunked it into her Maps app and was directed to a sideroad. It was going to be a twenty-five-minute walk. Ultear did it briskly and managed to stave off the worst of spring's bite.

The house she came to was hidden behind a wall of cedars, but when she walked up the paved driveway a bit and the trees parted, she saw that it was old money. Stone and vines and brickwork. Shudders and gardens. A pond. Ultear expected a fountain, so that was a nice surprise.

She passed by a tree still without its leaves. It was thorny and stout. There were odd bumps on the ends of its branches, like fungus, that made them sag towards the ground.

A blue '71 Chevy Monte Carlo sat in the driveway, its engine still ticking hot. She'd seen the car around town before. It was empty. She passed by its trunk and touched its smooth paint just to feel it under her fingers. It was warmed by the sun peeping out from behind the occasional cloud.

Ultear stepped up onto a patio stone. She was now even with the thorny tree and saw that what she thought was a fungus on the tree was actually… mice. Skewered and left to rot in the weak sunlight. They smelled. She covered her nose and turned away, disgusted. There was a guy behind her blocking her way, tall and broad with a flattened nose and a face like stone.

"Shrikes," he said first.

"Pardon?"

"Loggerhead Shrikes. The bird. They like Hawthorns."

"Are you saying a _bird_ did that?" Ultear clarified.

He lifted his leather-clad shoulder. "They skewer their prey and leave it to rot so when they come and eat it, it's easier to tear them apart."

She looked back at the tree. "That's disgusting."

"Wildlife says they're endangered, so my dad has to leave the tree."

Ultear connected the dots. "You're Ivan's son." A _legitimate_ son? He didn't _look_ very comfortable at this house, with his hands shoved way deep into his pockets and his spine stiff like he had rebar in its place.

"Laxus," he said.

"Ultear. I'm here to see Flare. She has my wallet," she said. "I dropped it. At _Tartarus_. Last night."

If he thought _anything_ at all once she was through speaking, Ultear couldn't tell. He was totally blank. "Come on in, then. She's probably upstairs."

"Flare didn't mention you."

"I bet not," Laxus said.

"You don't get along?"

He didn't respond.

Undeterred, she asked, "Do you live here?"

"Nope."

"But I've seen you around town."

He again didn't have anything to say. Ultear used fast steps to catch up with him; he had a long and impatient gait. At the front door, he left his shoes on. Ultear did the same, though she did take the time to wipe off her soles on the mat. Unlike Laxus.

Her first impression of Flare's home was that there was a manic and dangerous air to the place. It seeped out of the drywall and stained floor, it hid behind dusty entertainment units and in the shadows of closets. There were _secrets_ in this house, it was burgeoning with them, and she didn't want to know them.

There was also a debilitating hush. Ultear knew without really knowing _how_ that there was something horribly wrong. The air felt electrically charged like it did just before a thunderstorm. Buzzing and baleful. It made her skin _itch_ like nothing else.

She followed on Laxus' heels, out of the foyer and into the kitchen. There was water on the floor, it glistened in the midday light. There was glass on the floor, too, it sparkled and some pieces still twitched. The break was recent, yet none of the pieces still tinkered, leaving the air feeling pregnant and heavy.

Her first glimpse of Ivan Dreyar did not paint him in a golden light. His hand was still lifted and his eyes were still pinched at the corners, Flare's head was still turned from receiving his slap. Her cheek was quickly turning red and there were startled tears in her eyes. She looked up and spotted Ultear and her whole neck went red with shame. She sputtered and tried to get a word out.

Well before she figured out how to speak, Ultear crossed the room and shoved Ivan as hard as she could. He stumbled back and into the corner of the counter. Off-balance, he crashed next into the kitchen chairs. Ultear waited for him to rise with her fists clenched. She wasn't sure _what_ she was going to do. Something crazy; it was the night Natsu was attacked all over again. She was full of adrenaline and more than ready to fight.

He moved, just an inch like he was going to get up. Ultear kicked him hard in the thigh. She was reeling back for another when strong hands gripped her shoulders and actually _lifted_ her into the air and turned her around, so she was facing the other direction, to where Flare was fleeing the room. Her feet sliced on the glass and her trail was bloody.

Without Ivan in her direct line-of-sight, Ultear was able to think a little more clearly. She gave chase, up the stairs and into a room that was as tidy as any museum.

There was a case on the wall where Flare pinned various spiders and displayed them behind glass, there was a collection of feathers on her dresser beside her comb, books on a bookshelf, and a doll or two of Sailor Moon characters.

Flare sat on her plain maroon coverlet and stared at the blood on her feet. She looked as surprised as anyone to see it. Ultear didn't have the patience to coddle her. She went to Flare's closet without permission and flung the door wide. In the corner was a backpack. Ultear grabbed it out and started stuffing clothing into it. She tried to grab practical stuff but Flare had a lot of showy dresses and jumpers and wraps. She found a pair of jeans and a pair of tights, and then she found a tunic.

She went to Flare's dresser and dug in there, finding underwear and socks. She was opening the bottom drawer when Flare touched her arm and pulled her away. Ultear stepped back and let her crouch down. Beneath the mounds of shirts, there was a small wooden box like the kind for juggling balls. Flare took it and tucked it under her arm like she was carrying a baby.

"Where are we going?"

Ultear had barely thought about it. She said, "My mom's."

Flare smiled and took Ultear's hand.

Ultear descended the stairs just a little ahead of Flare. There were voices downstairs, pitched low and dangerous. Threatening, back and forth, building to a violent crescendo. Ultear's skin tingled again. She still wanted that fight and she didn't even care that Ivan was bigger than her or meaner than she was or even that this was his home and he could probably call the police and get her arrested.

Something smashed in the kitchen. Ultear took a step in that direction. Laxus came bursting through the door with murder in his eye and impatience in his shoulders. "Let's go."

He didn't leave very much room for arguing. Ultear snagged Flare's shoes on the way out the door and bustled down the concrete steps. Flare's bare feet left blood marks on them, and on the driveway, and even in Laxus' car. She smiled, though, and leaned her head against Ultear's shoulder while Laxus drove, white-knuckled.


	4. Chapter 4

You like the bright lights

Staying out every night

Teasing the boys, playing with toys

 _Danger,_ _danger_ that's a game that you play

* * *

Laxus bumped the front tire of his Monte Carlo against the curb out front of Ultear's house. Flare took her head of Ultear's shoulder and patted down her hair. "Thanks for driving, Laxus." She had a sunny disposition despite her cheek still showing the ghost of a slap against it. Her freckles stood out.

Laxus met her eyes in the rear view. Ultear couldn't misconstrue his expression. He didn't like Flare. Not at all. He propped his arm up on the window sill and waited silently. Flare got out first, her bag in tow. Ultear started to slide out behind her. Laxus held up a card without looking at her. It was a business card for a transmission place in town. She'd had less attractive men slip her their numbers in worse ways. Ultear curled her fingers around it and followed Flare outside. Just as soon as the door was closed, Laxus took off again, the tires squealing across the pavement.

"What's his problem?"

"He hates me," Flare confirmed.

"Why?" Ultear put his card in her purse without finding a slot for it in her wallet.

"I fucked his girlfriend once," Flare said blithely. "And she liked me better."

Ultear couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. "My mom's kind of conservative, so…"

"I'll behave."

When they entered, though, Ur wasn't there, it was just Silver, sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open. He closed whatever he'd been looking at when they entered. He was wearing his best Cop Face, so Ultear couldn't tell if it was work-related or if one of his side pieces was sending him nudes. Her blood got boiling when she thought of him checking that kind of stuff at her mom's kitchen table.

She had no proof, though, so she chose to be snippy rather than accusatory, glaring at him by means of hello.

"Ultear." Silver stood and came into the foyer. "Where were you?"

"Out."

" _Where_?"

Ultear got her foot on the stair. Silver was following her, though, so she had to say something. "Gray's."

His jaw tightened minutely. "All night?"

"That's where I slept, yeah."

He didn't relax too much. "Who's this?"

"Flare. She's going to be staying here for a few days."

"Does your mom know?"

"I pay rent, Silver," Ultear said cattily. "I don't have to ask permission unless I'm throwing a party, and frankly, one girl doesn't count."

Flare pursed her lips contrarily. "I think I'm a party."

Ultear wished she'd be quiet and gripped her hand. Silver looked her over, and then Ultear, and their clasped hands. "Oh," he said, like he came to some conclusion Ultear hadn't anticipated. His thoughts raced for one heartbeat, imagining, Ultear thought, all the disgusting things he shouldn't be imagining about girls her age. His thoughts cleared. "If you want to have your girlfriend over, that's fine, but your mom gets up early so don't be too loud."

Flare beamed. "You won't hear a peep."

Ultear gripped her hand tighter and tromped the rest of the way up the stairs. She closed her door firmly.

"You don't like that he called me your girlfriend?" Flare suggested.

"I don't like when Silver breathes," Ultear corrected her.

Flare laughed and clapped her hands. "I love it."

"Glad one of us does," Ultear muttered. "Stay here, I'll get you something for your foot." It was still bleeding.

"Sure." Flare smiled.

Ultear got alcohol and Band-Aids from the washroom. When she came back, Flare was exploring the closet, opening it and closing it again, then moving on to her dresser, peeking into her jewellery box. She stopped lastly by the bed. She touched the mattress first with her long, pale fingers, then sat on it experimentally. She must have deemed it worthy because she dropped her bag down beside her and flopped back.

"You have a nice room."

"It's okay." Economy-sized compared to Flare's.

"It's comfortable."

Ultear threw her purse on the chair by her vanity. "Give me your feet."

Flare held them up diligently. Ultear cleaned them up. There was one piece of glass in her big toe on the right foot. It came out easy. The left just had a cut. She sanitized both and then wrapped them up. Then she threw out the garbage and washed her hands. Flare was still flopped back on the bed upon her return. Ultear asked, "Do you have my wallet and keys?"

"Oh!" Flare sat up and grabbed the box she'd left her house with. Ultear tried to get a peek inside. She thought she saw silver, like a lock of hair. Flare brought out her wallet and her keys and snapped the lid closed, handing both to Ultear. "There you go."

"Thanks." Ultear put both away while Flare crossed her legs and used her eyes to look around some more.

"So, what's the deal with Captain Serious downstairs?"

"My mom's long-term fungus. Gray's dad."

Flare asked, "You don't get along? Like me and Laxus?"

"Seems that way," Ultear said.

Her eyes alit with a keen and unsettling interest. "Why?"

"He disappears for weeks on end with whatever girl thinks they can get out of a ticket with a blowjob."

"Really?"

She scowled. "No, not really." He was disgusting, but she thought maybe that was a road even he wouldn't go down. Hopefully. "I think he meets them online, or at the bars around town. Sometimes, he'll go dressed in his uniform still and stupid girls _love_ that. Especially college ones."

"Sounds like a creep."

"You have no idea," Ultear said. "I wish my mom would ditch him."

"Why won't she?"

"She thinks he's great. I told her he was giving me _I want to fuck you_ eyes but she thinks I'm crazy."

"I saw it."

"I _know_."

"So show her," Flare said.

"I don't know how," Ultear replied.

"I know just the thing," Flare said with a long and slow grin that confirmed Ultear's fears that she did, in fact, not like nice girls. "Come into my Parlour." She tapped the spot beside her. Ultear was thinking of flies as she obeyed.

* * *

Rain droned on outside the window. Ultear listened to it and tried to sleep. She had to work tomorrow but she couldn't rest, not like Flare could, naked and curled on her side, hair up over the pillow like a bloody fan.

She thought about The Plan and how she was going to make it work. Or if she was even brave enough to try to make it work. If it was worth it.

Yes, because she was tired of seeing the bags under her mother's eyes. She was tired of Silver's Cock Walk. She was tired of him dipping in and out of their lives like he was _entitled_ to leave all that destruction behind him each time he decided to leave.

An engine rattled outside her window and lights flooded inside, one and then two. She didn't think much of it at first, then, when the lights turned off, her phone started to vibrate. Ultear sat up and grabbed it off the dresser. Gray's face lit up the rectangle screen. The photo she'd taken for his caller ID was him by his truck on the day he moved out of her mother's house, about to pick up a dresser with Lyon's help.

Ultear snapped the picture not because he was happy but because he was broodier than usual. He'd argued with his father not two minutes before because Silver discovered Gray had left with the dresser they were about to move. She liked it when he was angry. He looked pretty and intense and he always needed an outlet afterwards. And she always tried her best to be there to be that outlet. She couldn't mimic the thrill of it anywhere, though she'd tried.

She let the call go to voicemail, though she picked up the phone so it wasn't buzzing on the desk, waking Flare up. When the screen went blank again, she texted him to let him know she knew he was there and climbed out of bed.

She stood by the open window because she knew he'd be looking and wriggled into a yellow shift dress she sometimes used for sleeping. She grabbed her moccasins before leaving. They were technically outdoor shoes but they doubled as slippers for her in the winter and spring months.

No one was awake downstairs; a nightlight guided her way. The front door was silent on its hinges. She made sure to keep them well-oiled for nights like this.

Gray's car was in the driveway, the lights and motor turned off. Ultear opened the passenger's door and climbed in. He still hadn't sewn the seat. The floor was clean, though, and the air smelled like vanilla Little Tree.

Gray's hair was in disarray like he'd swept it back with his fingers many times. _Thinking about if he should come over?_ Ultear thought. Probably. There was a cigarette in between his fingers and the faint smell of beer on his breath. He'd had at least one before deciding to come here.

The first words he said to her were, "I thought you were going to come over?"

"I said I'd think about it."

"In the way that meant yeah, Gray, I'll come over because there's nothing I love better than fucking with you."

Ultear cocked her brow. "So are you mad because I didn't come over to fuck with you or because I like fucking with you?"

Gray dismissed her. "Do you have my shirt?"

"Inside."

"Let's go get it, then."

"We can, but you should know, I have company." She may as well just put that out there now.

His mouth got flat. "Who?"

Ultear bit her lip but couldn't stop her smile. "Are you jealous?"

"No." In fact, he looked relieved after a moment's thought. Like maybe _she'd_ be the one to say, _I've found someone else to occupy me, thanks for your time, Gray. Go back to being a good boy, finding girls your dad won't shun you for fucking._

Not a fucking chance.

"That's too bad. You don't have to worry, though. It's not some hottie with a ten-incher."

"Then who?" Ah. Maybe he was a _little_ jealous.

"Flare."

Gray's eyes connected with hers and his expression turned acidic for none of the reasons she wanted it to. " _What_?"

Ultear sighed. "She had my wallet and my keys. I had to go get them, and when I showed up, her stepdad was smacking her around. What the fuck was I supposed to do?"

"Call the police?" he offered.

"The police in this town are lazy," she said pointedly. Gray didn't even try to defend his father.

"How long is she staying with you for?"

"Until she finds another place, I guess," Ultear said.

"And in the meantime?"

"What about the meantime?"

He looked at her with his eyebrows slightly raised. "You know she's fucked up."

In some ways. She couldn't say exactly _which,_ though. "Don't worry about it."

"I won't when you finally kick her out."

"I'm bored," she said. "Did you come here just to lecture me?"

Gray squeezed the grip on his steering wheel. "It's not a lecture—"

"So _yes_." Ultear grabbed the door handle. "Night."

" _Wait_." Gray grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Ultear had her smile smoothed by the time she faced him again.

"Yes?"

He leaned into her as if for a kiss. He stopped inches away, though. Always, always. She always needed to help him work up to it. She loved it. Shy or not, he was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin. He was chewing gum, leading her to think maybe he was drinking a little heavier than she'd previously assumed. He was reckless like that when he was bothered and nothing bothered him more than the women in his life.

"Mm… Today's Sunday, isn't it?" Ultear reasoned. "That means… Juvia called you promptly after church to tell you how sinful you were?"

Gray was looking at her mouth, not her eyes. "She suggested that I went to confession."

"Did you tell her you might not be a good boy but you pray every week?"

"I don't."

Feeling waspish, she leaned into his ear and whispered, " _Oh God, Ultear. Oh God. Please_."

"I don't sound like that."

"Sometimes." She smiled.

"I shouldn't have come here."

She was still smiling when she pressed her mouth to his. He reeked of shame and frustration returning the kiss. She continued it, smoothing the emotion away until he'd buried the shame and went right for gratification. He touched her cheek and turned towards her more completely. Ultear slid her tongue over his and Gray's fingers coiled in the strands of hair that had escaped her low ponytail. He made a noise that pinched low in her belly.

His kiss moved from her mouth to her chin. His teeth scraped over her skin. At the edge of her jaw, he kissed her neck. She shivered and he pulled her back and towards him, so his back was flat against his seat again and Ultear was leaning over the gearshift. He tipped his hips up and she conceded to give him what he wanted, grabbing between his legs and squeezing. He gasped and grabbed her breasts in both hands. He released her again a moment later because she'd gotten his pants undone and had gone searching inside.

"We're in your mom's driveway."

"You initiated it," Ultear reminded him. She got him free and stroked, slow and thoroughly. He pushed his seat back and arched for her again, his argument forgotten. She kept her hand loose and her touch soft, knowing that soon that wouldn't be enough. His thumbs slipped over the tips of her breasts and made her breath catch. Each small noise she made, he got thicker. Ultear wriggled unintentionally. It wasn't fair when her teasing was turned around on her.

He kissed her again and took her by the hips, pulling her over his gearshift and into his lap. Her knee knocked into an old coffee cup and she kicked some receipts onto the floor. She banged her leg on the door handle. Gray pulled up her shift and rested it on the tops of her breasts and she dismissed everything.

His tongue took up where his fingers left off, using light flicks to make her moan and wish he'd give her more. She pulled his hair and scratched his shoulders but he'd enlisted some of that patience she was so fond of, waiting until she was soaking wet and trembling, leaning back and pushing her hips forward, before inserting his fingers and angling them just right. He held her aloft and made her come with a few well-practiced strokes. She wriggled forward and rubbed her body against his and he mumbled his ' _Oh Gods,'_ and ' _Please_ s but she'd forgotten about her teasing and her power plays and everything else, too, her anger at Ivan and then at Silver, her uncertainty with Flare. Gone.

There were condoms in the console. Ultear's muscles were still quivering when she got one out and opened it for him. Gray took it from her and put it on. He dropped the wrapper somewhere and tipped towards her again. She shimmied up and took him inside. It started raining harder, the pelting muffling her short, frantic cries and the tired squeal of the car's springs.

Gray held her thighs and pushed into her hard. Ultear felt another orgasm coming and closed her eyes, feeling it build up and up and up. When it broke over her body, she shuddered like it was cold, though she sweated. Gray came almost immediately after and remained pushed up into her, fingers locked on her waist.

Gradually, he relaxed again. His thumbs loosened to draw designs on her hips. Ultear let him; it felt nice. She even let him kiss her collarbone. That felt nice, too. When she opened her eyes, she was staring into the back seat, at boxes of calipers. "How did your delivery go today?"

Gray dropped his head back to the car seat and closed his eyes. "Fine."

"Are you doing another?"

"When I'm told to."

She didn't like it. "You shouldn't."

"I don't think you should have a crazy lady sleeping in your bedroom but you do," Gray said.

"This is different."

"Yeah. I probably won't be suffocated in my sleep."

"Just shot in the street," Ultear mumbled.

He opened his eyes. "Are you _worried_?"

"Nope."

"Then what's this about?"

"You ditched me today."

He'd been working towards teasing her. Now he just looked annoyed. "You do this all the time."

"Tell you not to be stupid?"

"No. Anytime I'm not at your beck and call you get bent out of shape."

"Then I guess you should be there." Ultear fixed her dress and got off his lap.

"That's it? You're never going to let me be happy?" Gray jabbed.

"You're busy, not happy. It's different." She snipped off the last word and promptly exited his car. He was furious; she could feel his glare between her shoulder blades. She heard the tires roll over the pavement and allowed herself to look back. He'd put the car in neutral and let gravity roll him out onto the road. Once he was there, he started the growling engine and turned on his lights again. He then peeled away in much the same way Laxus had.

He was angry but she was confident that by tomorrow or, at the very least, the next time Juvia came to harass him, he'd be back at her stoop looking for a confidant. A distraction.

She opened the door quietly. The house was still dark. She tiptoed back upstairs and made a trip to the washroom to clean up. She did everything without the aid of the overhead light; the streetlamps were bright enough to see by.

Ultear paused halfway inside her room. Flare was sitting upright in her bed, the sheets down around her hips, breasts still bared and heavy. Her hair was a cascade of dull fire around her shoulders and her face was shadowed. Ultear didn't like that she couldn't see her eyes. She couldn't see what she was thinking then. Not that she'd had much success with that in the past.

Flare gathered her hair over to one side of her neck and Ultear came unstuck. She closed the door, dismissing her anxiety, and whispered, "What are you doing?"

Flare's voice was equally quiet. "I just woke up and you were gone."

"I was outside."

"With your brother?"

She kicked off her moccasins. "Yeah."

"Why was he here?"

"Just to hang out," Ultear fibbed.

"We're friends now."

"Yeah," Ultear drawled. "So what?"

Her mouth came out in a pout as she thought about her next words. "Do you love him?"

Ultear paused lifting her shift over her head. "Why would you ask that?"

"You kissed him."

Ultear changed her mind and left her shift where it was. "I kiss a lot of people."

"Just because?"

"Just for fun."

"Boys are terrible."

"People. People are terrible."

"But not him."

"Nope, he's plenty bad," Ultear said. "Just ask his ex." Ultear heard muttering in the room across the hall. Her mother was sort of a light sleeper. She told Flare, "Stop asking questions and go to sleep. My mom's waking up."

Flare laid back on her side of the bed. Ultear climbed in after her and faced the window. She wasn't comfortable. When she turned over, Flare's eyes were still open and she was staring at the ceiling.

"Can I say one more thing?"

"Quietly."

Flare's voice got as quiet as a summer's breeze. "I'm worried about you, Ultear."

" _Why_?

She turned her head. "You probably shouldn't have pushed Daddy, you know?"

That wasn't where she expected the conversation to go. "Why not?"

"He might try to hurt you for it. I won't let anything happen to you, though. Not ever." She coiled Ultear's hair around her fingers and closed her eyes. Ultear had more questions, but they were stuck behind a lump in her throat.


	5. Chapter 5

Dangerous; Are you all tied up, put in a box?

* * *

Sunlight tracked across Ultear's ceiling, golden and silver and red. She was warm where it touched her, and comfortable. She rolled over so it could hit her back, too, and came face-to-face with her houseguest.

Flare was still asleep; her hair clung to her neck like red ribbons and her blue eyelids looked almost bruised. Like her jaw. Ivan had hit her hard. Ultear bit her cheek to stifle her rage and quietly got out of bed. She needed to be at work soon.

She had a long-sleeved T-shirt dress with bunnies stenciled on the front, a nice Easter theme. She pulled it on and her underwear, too, a beige lace thong. Flare's wooden box wobbled on her dresser when she closed the drawer. Ultear thumbed the lid; what was important to her? She looked back over her shoulder. Flare was still asleep. Curious, Ultear slid her nail under the latch and flipped it open.

There wasn't much inside. A gold ring, like that a person would give for an engagement, and, yes, she had been right, a silver lock of hair. Ultear didn't want to touch it but she did. It was smooth like it had been recently brushed, and human, she was sure of it. Her eyes tracked right where she saw something much more disconcerting. Next to the hair was a pendant with a raven's head on it. She fingered the painted brass. It was cold and unexpectedly sharp.

Flare shifted in the bed and Ultear closed the lid silently. She looked back over her shoulder; Flare was still asleep so she snuck out of her room, closing the door quietly.

There was an aura permeating the downstairs that made Ultear uncomfortable. Every now and again, a small sob would break the still silence and Ultear's guts would wrench.

She stepped off the last stair trepidatiously and poked her head inside the kitchen. Ur looked up for a piece of paper and spotted Ultear. There'd been rage on her face; it disappeared in a flash and then she was just sad.

"What's wrong?" Ultear asked cautiously.

Ur folded the paper twice and wiped her eyes. "Nothing."

"Mom—"

"It's nothing."

She got right down to it, already sick of playing this game. "Did he leave again?"

"What?"

"Silver. Is he gone?"

"Of course not. Why would you say that? Did he say something to you?" she asked rapidly.

Ultear faltered. "No, I just thought—" She trailed off and started again. "What's going on?"

Ur dropped the paper to the table and admitted, "Our car insurance bounced," as if admitting that was less shameful than her letting her sometimes boyfriend come back many times over again.

" _How_?" She hadn't skipped out on the mortgage and Ur had been taking just as many shifts at the courthouse as she always did.

"Our gas bill was high last month. It was cold, so I had to shuffle some things around."

That was the last time Silver had checked out and not bothered to contribute. Ultear was suddenly seething. "Mom—"

"This is between your father and me."

"He's not my dad." Was _not._

"I'm tired of this. You used to love Silver."

"When I was thirteen and he'd drive me to school in his cruiser and all the popular girls would seethe with jealousy and say gross shit like _Ultear, your stepdad's so hot._ I'm not that girl anymore, though, and his badge doesn't fucking impress me."

Ur's lips pressed together. "We need his help."

"Love's fucking dead then, I guess. Give us your money, Silver. Oh, wait. You're so fucking useless, you can't even do _that_. Is he a good lay at least, mom? Please tell me yes. At least that way it'd almost be worth risking gonorrhoea."

Ur looked like she'd been slapped. "Ultear."

"Yes?" Ultear asked sweetly.

Ur's fingers curled on themselves and her face was taut. Ultear prepared herself for the worst but Ur's intense expression settled and she donned the cool collectedness that Ultear could never mimic. "How long is your friend staying with us?"

Ultear was frustrated but she shrugged. "Dunno."

Ur stood and started getting all of her things together for work. "Make sure you're not buying everything. She should contribute so you're not out of pocket for every meal."

"She's only here for a few days. Until she finds someplace else."

"Sure."

Though Ultear prepared for more, that was all she got. Her mother swung by and kissed Ultear's cheek. "I'm glad you found someone. Silver said she was very pretty."

"That's…" Ultear trailed off. What was the point?

A horn beeped twice in quick succession from their driveway,

"Who the hell is that?"

"My carpool friend," Ur said. "You can take the car today. It needs gas, though."

"Thanks," Ultear said.

Ur squeezed Ultear's hand. Ultear couldn't tell if she had an amazing capacity for forgiveness or if she was a pushover. "I'll see you tonight." The front door closed and she was suddenly alone. Ultear drummed her fingers against her legs. Then she remembered the paper. She tried to take it off the table to see what it actually said, but her mother had pocketed it when she left.

 _Insurance my ass,_ Ultear thought bitterly.

She did her makeup in the downstairs washroom and threw her red pea coat over her dress. There was a pair of shin-tall boots in the downstairs closet. They were her moms but they looked cute so she borrowed them.

She closed the door silently behind herself and got across the damp yard with long steps. Everything was rushed and done quietly, except for when she opened her car door and there was a dead squirrel on the driver's mat, its head missing and its intestines spilled. It smelled the way the freshly dead did, with all the blood and the visceral inner meat, but none of the rot, not yet, it was too fresh.

Ultear was so startled, she froze, to the point where she didn't notice Silver's cruiser pull into the driveway until his door closed and he was at her elbow asking her, "What's wrong?"

Ultear swallowed; her throat felt small. "There's a dead squirrel in my car."

Silver stooped and frowned. "Looks like a cat got to it or something."

"And left it in my car?"

He peered into the back seat. "Your mom left the back window open and I couldn't get Dexter in last night," he said, naming the family cat. "He was probably trying to let your mom know he still loved her. Cats do that, you know?"

Ultear bent to see what he did. Sure enough, the back window was open wide enough that a small cat could fit through. "That's disgusting."

"That's nature."

Then nature was fucking disgusting.

Silver took out the mat and washed it for her while Ultear went to work.

* * *

Weekdays at the museum were _boring._ There was a small rush of parents bringing in their children before they had to go back to school on Tuesday but it was miniscule. There was one person, however, that caught her attention. A tall blonde man with a pouty blue-haired girl at his side. He crossed his arms, bored, while she studied an ancient suit of armour with fascination and fear.

Ultear hid her duster behind her back and stepped over the _Staff Only_ line surrounding the medieval exhibit. "Hey, Laxus."

He looked up, startled. There was a cigarette in his ear and a pack rolled up in his shirt sleeve like he'd stepped right out of the 1950s. Then he recognized her and he relaxed. "Hey…"

"Ultear," she supplied, annoyed. It wasn't like he gave her his card or anything.

"Right. Flare's friend."

"I guess, yeah."

"How's that going for you?"

"Being her friend?"

"Her staying with you," he clarified.

"It's only been a day." Laxus remained looking at her, waiting for an answer. "Fine," Ultear said. "It's been fine."

"Will you take a picture of me with the armour, Laxus?" asked the little girl.

"Yeah," Laxus said. "Give me a sec."

"I didn't think you were the babysitting type," Ultear teased.

"I'm not."

"So is that your daughter?" He looked too young, but what did she know?

Laxus looked at her flatly, no smile, no emotion. "Come by the tranny shop when you get a chance. Tonight or whatever. Alone"

It wasn't the _worst_ proposition she'd had, even if he did have a little girl in tow. Ultear smiled and left him without saying either way because she honestly didn't know.

* * *

By the time Ultear was done on the Medieval floor, her feet hurt and it was time to go home. She clocked out and checked her phone on her way to the car. Flare had texted her thirteen times. Thirteen. Entire. Times. First, it was,

 _Where are you?_

And then it was,

 _Hello?_

 _Ul?_

 _Did I make you mad?_

 _You're mad, aren't you? That's why you went away._

 _Is it about Daddy? Don't be upset about that. I'll take care of it._

 _I promise. I'm going over there right now to tell him to be nice to you._

There was a solid hour between that text and the last. Then she came back to say,

 _Okay, he wasn't home. I got_ _The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, though._

 _And liquorice._

 _Do you like liquorice? It's cherry favoured._

 _Ul_

 _Tear._

 _Are you with your brother again?_

And then silence. Somehow, that was worse than her incessant texting.

Ultear let her fingers hover over the text buttons, hesitating. _She didn't know what to say._

Another text buzzed through, startling her. It said, _sorry. I'm freaking out a little. Last night and today's been a lot._

Guilt made Ultear's fingers slow in texting, _I'm working right now. Still have a few hours._

Flare got back to her immediately, saying, _Oh! Haha. Okay, babe, see you when you get home._ A kissy face emoji was tagged onto the end. Ultear backed out of the conversation and closed it.

Halfway through her drive, she took a right instead of a left, bringing her into the Patch. She passed by Cana's house. Her bike wasn't in the driveway; that was good, Ultear thought she may have stopped by if that hadn't been the case. To what end? To learn more about Flare, probably. To apologize for being so shitty. Or to just ignore all of everything and to try to pick up where the left off last time before Lucy got involved. Sometimes, that felt like the biggest fucking mistake of her adult life.

Cana was about as subtle as a hammer, though, and she'd _want_ Ultear to broach the subject. If she wouldn't, Cana would, and Cana had an unforgiving way about her when she wanted to clear the air. Ultear didn't think she could handle the brutal truth just then.

She kept going past Cana's driveway and ended up at Gray's. He was always okay to let her be.

His new car was in the driveway and music, as ever, could be heard pouring out of the townhouse's walls. This time, it was grandson's _Despicable_. Angry and angsty was today's flavour. Last night's parting was fresh in her mind as she turned off the engine and got out into the spring air. There was a warmth to the breeze, promising blooming lilacs and tulips at the houses that cared to have them—a very select few in this part of the Patch.

Ultear mounted Gray's steps like she had a hundred other times and invited herself into his house. The air was thick with marijuana smoke and the bass was loud enough that it vibrated her feet. She lost her shoes at the door and fixed her hair, taking it out of its respectable curator's plait.

When she came around the corner, Gray was slouched on his couch with a bong in his hand. He was in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and didn't even look all that surprised to see her. He held the bong out for her and she accepted it.

"This is disgusting," she told him after her first inhale. It was stronger than the stuff he usually got. She assumed it was from Cana's stock. She had access to all manner of things now that Raven Tail's mark was on her arm.

"Yep."

She took another and started to disassociate. Everything got soft and distant. The third hit she took, her tension was gone. She relaxed into the couch; Gray took the bong from her and put it on the table. It was difficult to tell if he moved just as lethargic as she did, or if her brain was just crawling along, processing everything slowly.

"Do you have my shirt?"

Ultear laughed. "No."

Gray smiled dopily. "I wasn't kidding. I want it back."

"You barely wear it anyway," she told him. "And when you do, you're always opening it up like—like you're Michelangelo's David or something."

"I don't."

"Yeah, you do."

He backtracked. "I work hard on this."

Ultear snorted; it really wasn't that funny. She settled back and stared at the ceiling. "Maybe that's why Juvia won't leave you alone, you're always sending her mixed messages. Try to be fat and ugly, that might help."

"Is that why you're here?"

"To make you fat and ugly?"

"To lecture me."

"No," she said truthfully.

"Then?"

"I don't want to go home, I think," Ultear said.

Gray warmed up to her a bit, turning so he could look at her more completely now that she'd assured him she wasn't there for blood. "Why?"

"Flare texted me thirteen times today. And she saw us together last night."

He got serious, his tension rising. "Saw _what_?"

"Well, she knows we kissed, and if she knows that, I'm sure she knows the rest," Ultear said without any barb in her voice.

"Fuck. Fuck. I fucking knew this was going to happen."

Gray tried to stand; Ultear took his arm and pulled him back down. "Chill out, will you?" He was harshing her buzz.

"How can I? People are going to talk."

"And what are they going to say? Gray's fucking his stepsister? Oh, no."

He got quiet. "You really don't care?"

"What the fuck do I care what people say? They whisper it already," she bargained. "If you don't know that, then you're even dumber than I thought."

"Every time I think you're not a total bitch you prove me wrong," he complained. Ultear smiled. The drugs made her soft and happy.

"You like it."

"What's to like?"

"You tell me, you're the one that keeps having me back."

Gray took her hand, stopping its journey up his leg. "Can you not fuck with me for one _day_?"

"It's fun." And had always been that way.

"Or is it another way at punishing my father? That's it, isn't it? You know this would piss him off and that's why you're always here."

She scrunched up her nose. "I think that would require him _knowing_ , Gray. Unless you told him?"

"Obviously not." They fell into silence. Ultear watched him from between her lashes. He looked so sullen, she heard herself say,

"I don't want you to be unhappy, you know?"

Her words made his eyes got dark and serious; she didn't know what he was thinking but whatever it was, it made her stomach flop over like a rollercoaster might. "No?"

"Not always."

"Then what is it?"

"You're the only one who's always there. I don't want you to go away."

He didn't get upset. He touched her hair again in that tender way he had the night she was roofied and Ultear found herself paralysed. He kissed her in a much too caring way but she wasn't able to stop it.

Without any resistance from her, Gray pulled her hand and thusly, pulled her closer. His other hand took her by the hip and pushed, forcing Ultear onto his lap. She settled down, one leg on either side of his hips, and tried to feel superior. Without being the one to lead, though, she was at a surprising loss. She was unused to Gray initiating anything with her, though she'd watched him turn into Juvia at parties, sitting on logs outside or on stranger's couches, and kissing her until she was red in the cheeks and grasping desperately at his hair.

A thrill moved through her, different from those she'd felt before. She settled into his lap and let him come back to her mouth to kiss her in the same way. Her tongue was dry and her head was spider's webs and both sensations only got worse as the moments ticked by.

Gray held her hips and brought her closer to his body. Ultear felt him pressing against her and another thrill assailed her. This Gray was very different from the Gray she'd had in his car last night. He put his hands up under her T-shirt dress and grasped her with bruising force. He kissed her with a certainty she'd yet to feel from him. It scared her and excited her all at once, and honestly, wasn't that the way it was _supposed_ to be?

He pulled her closer again and lifted her dress. Ultear wriggled out of it at his behest. It was cool in his apartment. Grandson had changed to Bishop Briggs, who was singing about running towards a fire. Gray kissed her throat and her chin and her mouth again while his hands worked busily behind her, stripping her of the bra she'd donned that morning and then grabbing her breasts once they were free. He didn't do it in the same shameful way he had before, his touches were sure today and left her with very little doubt that he wasn't doing this just because she wanted to and he didn't know how to say no. She got another thrill, but this one was all trepidation. She'd never had a sure-footed Gray.

He dropped kisses to her collarbones and to her breasts and even to her ribs, lifting his hips as he did so and pushing into her. Ultear's world disassociated even more, though for different reasons. She slithered from his lap when he'd let her and opened his pants. This didn't make her feel like she had any more control than before, though, and not because he forced himself on her, but because he sat back with the look of a man that was newly comfortable with a thing. He took her hair in his hands, gently, though, and lifted into her mouth. She glanced up to see if he was enjoying it; his eyes were on her and his mouth was very, very sombre. He was thinking dangerous thoughts again and she wasn't sure she totally hated it.

She stopped her ministration and climbed back into his lap. Gray had a condom in his hand, where it'd come from, she wasn't sure. He kissed her while he put it on beneath her thighs and pushed inside. Pleasure outweighed her uncertainty. She closed her eyes and pretended like everything that had happened here today was her own doing.

* * *

Ultear was semi-sober driving home. She stopped at the convenience store to get a drink and a box of Teddy Grams to satiate her sweet tooth. The clerk rang her up without meeting her eyes. On her way back to her car, she heard a door slam but couldn't identify where it'd come from. It was dark now, the spring's sun set long ago.

Paranoid for reasons she couldn't explain, she walked quickly to her car. She dropped the keys while trying to get the door unlocked. She didn't want to bend for them, absurdly scared of the shadows under her car. What if Pennywise was under there, waiting to grab her feet and drag her into his deadlights? She couldn't just stand there, though, she had to _go_.

Ultear popped down and grabbed them and hopped right back up again. There was a body behind her, though, she brushed it on her way up and saw its reflection in the window. She screamed, she couldn't help it, and whipped around, fists raised. She hit first, always operating under the philosophy of asking questions later, and the person stumbled back, hissing.

"Ow, fuck!"

She recognized that voice and stayed her hand for her second punch. "What are you _doing_ , Natsu?"

"I should be asking you that!" he exclaimed. "My fucking nose is bleeding." She could see the crimson leaking from his hands. Ultear opened her car and got out Subway napkins from her cup holder.

"That's what you get for sneaking up on a person."

"I didn't _sneak_ ," he said. "I waved and you didn't fucking see."

"Because it's pitch black out and I was trying to get my keys!" she exclaimed.

Natsu scowled at her. " _Before_ you went into the store."

Ultear sighed and helped him mop up the blood.

"I'm going to have two black eyes," Natsu groused. "Lucy's going to think I was fighting again." As if that was a common occurrence.

"Just tell her the truth."

He wouldn't, Ultear could see it in his eyes. Probably because Lucy would then ask what he was doing out there with _her_ , of all people, and Natsu would have to think of something to say that wouldn't offend his cautious girlfriend. Ultear had heard rumors that Lucy frequently asked him where he was going and with whom. It wasn't any of Ultear's business, so she didn't ask if it bothered him that Lucy was untrusting after his brief affair with heroin and all of the vices that went with it.

Ultear changed the subject. "So? Why are you sneaking up on me in parking lots after dark?"

He scowled. "I just wanted to say hi. We haven't talked in a while."

Through no fault of her own. Natsu was heinously absent lately. He'd moved out of his apartment the week after Zeref was arrested and moved into a place uptown that she was sure he didn't pay for. Lucy lived with him on weekends and who knew what he did during the weekdays? He didn't come to the Patch, he didn't hang out with Angel or Erik and he certainly didn't call Ultear anymore.

"Well," she said coolly just for the sake of it, "Hi." She tried to get into her car. Natsu said,

"What have you been up to lately?"

"Not ignoring my friends, I suppose," she said with a mean smile.

Natsu faltered. "I've been busy."

"Oh, great! You've been busy, so you can't make time for me. I'm busy, too." She opened her door. Salvation was in sight.

Then Natsu said, "Zeref was asking about you," and Ultear stopped.

"He was?"

"He was asking how you were doing. He said you should come by one day if you get a chance. Visiting hours are on the weekends, two to three."

Her heart did that weird thing it _always_ did when Zeref was involved and she hated herself for it. "He said that? Why?"

Natsu shrugged. "Dunno. I didn't ask." Of course he didn't, Natsu _wouldn't_.

Someone new called her name. She turned and found Flare crossing the parking lot at a jog, a coffee clutched between her two hands and slopping against the lid and over her fingers. She didn't flinch, though Ultear could see that it was steaming. "I thought that was you! What are you doing out here?" Ultear took a second to gather herself, and in that second, Flare had crossed to her side and leaned against her car door. "Is he bothering you?"

"No," Ultear said, remembering the last time Flare decided that she was going to cure Ultear of a bother. Natsu didn't deserve to have Flare's coffee thrown in his face. "He's my friend, Natsu."

"Hi." Flare's smile didn't reach her face. She turned her back on Natsu and addressed Ultear. "I got everything set up for tonight."

"Do you want to come watch a movie?" Ultear offered to Natsu.

"No," Flare said immediately and Ultear raised her eyebrows. Flare added, "We don't have enough snacks."

"That's alright," Natsu said. "I have some work I have to do tonight."

"You got a job?" Ultear queried.

Natsu shrugged with both shoulders. "Sorta. Yeah."

"Call me when you're done, we'll set up a time to hang out or something," Ultear said. "I can see your new apartment and you can tell me about it."

"Yeah," Natsu said noncommittally. "I guess."

Flare looked miffed; Ultear was, too, though for different reasons, she imagined. Natsu never used to blow her off. She opened her car door and dropped into the driver's seat. "Nice to see you."

"Take care, Ultear."

Flare came around the passenger's side and waited for Ultear to open the door. She honestly thought about _not._ About just driving away. Flare would have to come back for her stuff, though, and Ultear didn't want to deal with that awkwardness. She unlocked the door and Flare dropped in.

"I thought for a second you weren't going to open up," she said with a smile.

Ultear laughed and put the car in drive. Her headlight swung across Natsu's truck on her way out. He wasn't alone, he was talking to a tall man with a tattoo on his face. The man's eyes locked with Ultear's and she couldn't look away for so long, she had to swerve around a car coming into the parking lot. Flare looked at her peculiarly and Ultear acted like nothing happened.


	6. Chapter 6

I was a dangerous girl; you were too nice for this world.

* * *

Though her mom's shoes were by the door, the house was quiet. Ultear took Flare's box of popcorn and sent her upstairs to set up the movie while she entered the mostly dark kitchen. Only streetlamp light lit up the space. She got halfway in, level with the stove against the wall before she realized that she wasn't alone. Her mom sat at the kitchen table with her hands pressed against her eyes, shoulders bobbing in a telltale way for the second time that day. How often did this happen?

Ultear paused, deciding how best to approach her. _Was_ there a good way? "What's wrong?"

Ur dropped her hands and glared at Ultear like _she_ was the culprit. She picked up a stack of paper in front of her and flung it across the table. Ultear's stomach churned as she took the one on top and lifted it up.

It was a letter penned in feminine handwriting, a note made out to Silver. It was raunchy filthy. Ultear read the first three lines, then skipped to the end where the writer had scribed her initials. EB. She flipped to the next and saw much the same. She kept her face blank when she lifted her eyes and asked her mom, "Where did these come from?"

Ur just stared at her. Ultear shifted her weight; then stopped. She pushed the stack of papers together and put them down on the table, neatly. By the time she was done with that, her mother had stood and moved out of the kitchen. Ultear could barely hear her climbing the stairs.

She left the popcorn and the notes where they were and followed her mother, though, at the top of the stairs, she went left to her room. Flare was sitting against the headboard in a pair of near-sheer pajamas. She saw Ultear and smiled. "Hey, baby."

Ultear closed the door. "Did you write those letters today?"

Flare's grin turned wicked. "Did she find them?"

"What were you thinking?" Ultear hissed.

Flare looked confused. "I thought you wanted me to?"

"I wanted to find _actual_ proof."

"I know but I went through his laptop and didn't find anything in his email," she said. "So I fixed the problem."

Ultear's ears roared. " _Flare_! Fucking _god._ "

"I thought you _wanted_ him gone?" she asked innocently. "I was just doing what you wanted."

Ultear pressed her fingers against her temples. "No. No. No."

"Are you mad?"

"Of _course_ I'm mad!" Ultear snapped. "Why _wouldn't_ I be mad? You just _lied_ to my mom and she's really upset and I'm going to have to fix it!"

Flare suggested, "Or you could not."

Ultear played her words over in her mind. She could not. And her mother would kick Silver out again and maybe this time would be the last time. She would be a bad person for it, maybe, but was it _that_ bad if she was doing it for a good reason? This wasn't Lucy all over again. She wasn't bringing a girl to bed when she _knew_ that girl was just trying to be the kind of girl her on again, off again boyfriend might like. She was trying to save her mom some heartache. By inflicting some more early on. A tiger couldn't change his stripes. He just couldn't.

Flare read her like they'd always been together. "Forget about it. He's going to get what he deserves."

No matter how she tried, though, she couldn't escape the truth. "He didn't _do_ this."

Flare got to her knees and grabbed Ultear's hands, pulling her close. She wasn't in a bra and her nightgown rode up on her thighs. She was beautiful when she was intense, like a spider or a scorpion one breath away from lashing out. "No, he was probably off doing something worse while I was writing those letters. You know I'm right," she said vehemently. "You _know_ it."

Ultear wanted to scream, she was so conflicted.

Flare tried her hardest to ignore Ultear's agitation and patted the bed beside her. "Come sit."

Ultear sucked in a breath and made a hard decision. "I can't, Flare, I have to go talk to my mom."

The muscle in Flare's jaw twitched. "Just wait. Until morning."

"Silver's going to come home and there's going to be a big fucking scene. I have to talk to her _now._ " Even as an adult, she hated those fights.

"Silver doesn't get home until the morning," Flare told her. "He's working a double today."

"Why?"

"Didn't you hear? Someone killed a dog and left it on the hood of his cruiser. He's working extra hard trying to figure out who did it." She looked gleeful delivering the news. "The pig."

Ultear shivered with revulsion. "Holy fuck. Who would do that?"

Flare shrugged. "Some psycho he pissed off, I guess. Maybe that boy you were talking to."

"Natsu? He wouldn't do that."

"That was before he was a bruiser for the Fernandezes."

She tried to act unsurprised like she had known all along what Natsu's new job had been, but Flare was a vulture and saw the truth in her eyes and Ultear gave up the act. "How do you know?"

"I know a girl on the police force. She said Silver's been hunting for a guy that knocked over the liquor store on Rickard Street. He didn't steal anything but he kicked the fuck out of the owner, who gave a description matching your friend. She said Silver was told by his Staff Sargent that he got the description wrong and to keep looking somewhere else. Someone doesn't want Silver looking for Natsu. Sounds gang-y to me."

It sure did, if it was true. Ultear straightened her spine and started to gather her things. "You know, maybe Natsu may have beaten up some asshole but he didn't kill a dog and put it on Silver's car. You don't know him."

"I don't have to. He has a dick? He's a bad person."

Ultear shook Flare off and trekked out the door and down the stairs. Flare was right there chasing after her.

"Where are you going?"

"To see him, obviously," Ultear barked too loudly.

"Ultear, no, he'll just be awful to you," Flare insisted. "Don't. Don't go! He's not a good person." She'd taken Ultear's hand again and sat back so her butt was on the stairs. Ultear jerked out of her grasp.

"Fuck _off."_ She didn't stop to look at Flare's shocked face.

* * *

The windshield kept fogging up. Ultear undid her window to clear it rather than turn on the defroster; her teeth were chattering and that was okay; it was distracting. Not distracting _enough,_ though. She kept grabbing her phone and lifting it up. She'd check the same three apps, hover over her messages, and then drop her phone again. Then a text came through and she almost yelled.

It was Gray, asking, _Are you okay?_

Ultear was unnerved. _Why wouldn't I be?_

 _You're sitting outside of the hardware store at three in the morning,_ he suggested.

Ultear looked around and saw Malibu taillights at the stoplight eight hundred metres down the road. _Are you making deliveries again?_

 _I'll be done in an hour. Come by?_ he offered.

She didn't answer him but she suspected that Gray expected that. She opened her text messages and found Natsu's contact information. He got back to her right away, which was different from the Natsu of months passed, back in the time when he could barely take care of himself. He gave over his address and told her to come by.

* * *

Ultear didn't know if she'd call his apartment upscale, exactly, but it was certainly a leap up from his ancient movie store with barely a kitchen and barely a bathroom. This place had a lobby, and in the lobby was actual Cala lilies. The floors were so bright and clean that the overhead light fixtures could be seen reflecting in them. The colour scheme was gold and bronze, on the trims and on the reception desk.

There was no receptionist there now, it was too late for that, but Natsu was there in a pair of faded blue jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt, waiting for her. Though she didn't feel much like smiling, Ultear lifted the corners of her mouth as Natsu pulled open the lobby doors and let her in.

"Hey." She hugged him briefly around the shoulders. Natsu returned it and then led her to an elevator. He was so different from his older brother, more open, easier to talk to, though if she looked closely, under the right light, she could see there was a hard edge to him. She liked that about Natsu. He was the balance in the Dragneel household, even if he sometimes forgot that.

As the doors closed, Natsu told her, "My neighbours are kind of quiet so…"

"I won't announce I'm here so they can tell Lucy," she said, nipping his worries right in the bud.

Natsu hit the elevator button, mouth pursed. "She's just…"

"I get it," Ultear said, and it was almost true. She'd never loved anyone like that, but she imagined if she did, she might be able to sympathize.

The elevator doors swished open again and they stepped out onto floor nineteen of twenty. There was more tile here, shiny and bright, and more bronze trim, sans gold. Natsu opened apartment number five-oh-three. It was simplistic and open, but also nice, the wall paints good, the floor more shined tile, the furniture of not excellent but good quality.

There were two pairs of shoes at the door, Natsu's loved converses and his work boots. They'd seen some things, rough and worn, ripped on the toes and stained. At least some things never changed.

She kicked off her own boots and gave herself a little tour. The bedroom was in a little bit of disarray, a couple pairs of Natsu's shorts were on an armchair beside the bed, he had some other clothes strewn about, too, some shirts and a leather jacket Ultear immediately recognized. She picked it up and turned it around so she could see the back. There was some kind of tree-like monster where the spine would rest. It still smelled like Zeref. She let it go, confused all over again, and continued her self-guided tour. Natsu leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and watched her with an unreadable expression.

She got to the practical washroom where Lucy's stuff sat beside Natsu's, hair product, a toothbrush, combs, and a bra hung on the back of the bathroom door. She came back out into the living room again. "Swanky."

"It's okay."

"You used to live in a rat hole."

Natsu frowned. "The movie store wasn't that bad."

She saw the truth in that simple sentence. He missed his old way of life. This apartment fit him like a too-small T-shirt. "Why didn't you look for something a little more your speed?"

Natsu wasn't prickly the way Gray was and didn't immediately let her get under his skin. "Lucy likes it."

"What about what you like?"

His response was a flat stare. Ultear took herself to his couch and dropped down. It smelled like Febreze. "Did you clean just for me?"

"Lucy comes home tomorrow," he said and sat opposite to her.

"She's almost done for the summer?"

"Yep."

"And then I guess she can make sure you're really walking the straight and narrow. You'll have to get rid of these." She lifted the pill container she'd swiped off the lamp table. Percocet.

"They're prescription," he told her. She checked. He was telling the truth.

She opened the bottle and looked inside. There were a lot of pills left, though it'd been dated for February. She shook out one perfectly round pill and put the lid back on the bottle. "What do you need a prescription for Percocet for?" For the first time since she'd entered, he looked uncomfortable. "Come on, Natsu," Ultear nudged. "Spill."

"I had some ribs broken back in February," he said.

"Really?" Ultear looked at him while she lifted the pill to her mouth. He didn't stop her. She touched it to her lips but didn't swallow. "You didn't take them, though."

His jaw flexed. "I couldn't."

"Because you liked it," she stated. "You couldn't get rid of the bottle, either."

His jaw flexed again. He leaned forward and took the pills from her hand. Ultear thought at first he was going to take one, too, but then he opened the drawer on the lampstand to his right and threw the pills inside. She glimpsed other paraphernalia in there. A pipe and a baggy of weed. He kept his place relatively clean now. It was a lot different than the movie store, though it seemed that he couldn't be completely straight.

Ultear put the pill in her bra. "Who broke your ribs?"

"Who said it was anyone? I crashed the truck." When people lied, they looked away or shifted their bodies or blinked. Natsu did all three.

Ultear shook her head. "Someone told me you were busting heads for a guy named Fernandez."

Natsu looked at her so fast, Ultear was afraid his neck would snap. "Who the fuck said that?"

"So it's true?" She _hated_ that Flare was right.

"Who told you?" he demanded.

"The girl I was with tonight," she admitted.

"Flare Corona," Natsu stated.

"You know her?"

"She punched Cana a few months ago."

"She mentioned."

"She's crazy," Natsu said. "Zeref told me after Cana ran off, Flare tried to go after her. Elfman Strauss stopped her and she tried to cut him."

" _Cut_ him?" Ultear repeated.

He shrugged. "Apparently she picked up a piece of glass out behind Fairy Tail and was chasing after Cana. Elfman grabbed her and she started swinging at him."

"How'd he get her to stop?"

"Someone called the cops and when they showed up, Flare ran off. Elfman didn't press charges, though."

Ultear shook her head. "This fucking girl is in my house right now."

"Why?"

"Because I'm stupid," Ultear muttered and stood. "I have to go and make sure she's not terrorizing my mom."

Natsu stood, too, like he was going to join her, but was distracted when someone knocked on his front door. Uncertainty flashed across his face; he looked at Ultear. She raised her brows. "Do you want me to hide?" She was joking, but Natsu looked like he was honestly considering saying yes.

Ultear crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly and Natsu deflated, going to the door. When he pulled it back, the man from the parking lot waited. He looked past Natsu to Ultear and she felt like squirming. This was Jellal Fernandez. She'd heard of Lucy's cousin, of course, anyone that'd ever bought heroin in Magnolia had. It was strange having the mystique of legend ripped away, though, and have it replaced by a real-life man. He had a scar on his stubbled chin and a tattoo on his face, and gold ring after gold ring on his fingers. One of those was a wedding band. He twisted it with his thumb like it bothered him.

"Hey." Natsu made good at not looking back over his shoulder at Ultear. That's what someone guilty would do. "What's up?"

"Something came up," Jellal spoke to Natsu but looked at Ultear. "We have to take care of it."

Natsu looked both sickened and interested and Ultear imagined that the life of a crime lord's lackey was a conflicted one. He liked war, but he was trying to be a good person. What was a boy to do? She wondered if every time he 'took care of something', if he dreaded getting hurt or if he looked forward to it, that way he'd have an excuse to pull out his Percocet bottle and tiptoe around addiction again. He'd probably see it as a challenge, Ultear thought, a butting of wills. Rational Natsu against easy dopamine.

"I was just going to take Ultear home," Natsu said and Jellal's eyes narrowed in a way that made Ultear giddy in the same way Zeref did. She didn't need anyone to tell her this was not a good place for her to be.

"I'll take myself home, no worries."

"But Flare—" Natsu began.

"I can handle Flare," Ultear assured him and snuck by Jellal to get her boots on. He smelled nice, like cigars and soap and laundry detergent, but also like sweat. Up this close, she could see he was dishevelled. She didn't need to be a bloodhound to know what he'd been doing before barging into Natsu's apartment. He was still twisting his wedding ring around his finger and she concluded it wasn't his wife that made him this way.

Ultear took the elevator back downstairs. The parking lot that hadn't bothered her before when Natsu was inside the lobby watching her approach suddenly looked menacing. She'd parked too far away. Cool air chilled her nose and cut through her sweater as she covered pavement at a crooked jog. A silhouette appeared out of the darkness. Ultear told herself to calm down, the last time she'd let herself get irrational, Natsu had been punched in the face, but as she got closer, she realized that the person _was_ leaning against her car, and it was a person she didn't know.

She slowed to a crawl. The person lifted up off her hood and her car's spring's squeaked. Ultear patted herself down for a weapon but she had nothing but her fists. She balled them together and waited for them to approach. She would not run because running is what scared people did and she wouldn't let anyone know the truth.

The person stepped closer and Ultear saw it was a man, tall and thin with greasy black hair and eyes that reminded her of a snake. "Got a dart?"

"No, sorry." She gave him a wide berth; he followed like a dog on a lead.

"What about a light, then?"

"I don't smoke," Ultear said.

"Sure, no problem."

Ultear wished she had a key fob. She'd unlock her car and leap inside. She had a key, however, and had to get it in the lock. That took time. She was almost at her car door. The man was right on her heels, though. She couldn't help but turn around and look at him. He was making her nervous.

"Give me a ride to Port Canyon?" he asked, naming the next town over.

"No."

"I'll toss a bill your way."

"If you can pay me, you can call a cab." Ultear fingered through her keys for her car keys so when she was at the door a step later, she was able to get the key in the lock. She wasn't quick enough, though, her follower was there and he was grabbing her wrist, turning her around to face him. His mouth was too wide and his lips were too thin.

"I don't want a cab; I want you to drive me."

"Gross. Let me go." She pushed him hard; he hit the car Ultear had parked against and came right back, ill intent in his eyes. Ultear was too close for her punch to have as much impact as it normally would, but he stopped coming at her so he could grab his chin. Then he smiled; his teeth were dark with blood. Ultear made a fist again; her hand hurt dully. " _Fuck_ off."

"I can't. I was told to bring you into the boss and," he shrugged like it was an inevitability.

"Kurohibi, I thought I smelled a snake," said someone new. Ultear took her eyes off her attacker to see Jellal and Natsu cross the parking lot. Jellal looked mildly disgusted, Natsu looked livid. Kurohibi took a step back and another, though he didn't say anything. Jellal asked, "Why are you here?"

"The boss wants the girl," Kurohibi said at last.

"That's not going to be possible," Jellal informed him.

Kurohibi sucked on his tooth. "I have to."

"Would you get in your car, please, Miss Milkovich?" Jellal asked with a smile Ultear would have said was polite if she didn't see it's razor's edge and the violence in Natsu's stance. She might have said no but she had other matters to attend to.

Her engine lagged turning over and then it caught. A drop of rain fell on the windshield and then a hundred others. Ultear didn't turn her wipers on until she was at the road, distracted by the figures she could see in her rear view, moving with violence through the parking lot, and thoughts of what waited for her at home. Her blood roared in her ears.

She turned the corner and Natsu was no longer in view. She depressed the accelerator and her tires slipped over the wet pavement. Once her car was under control again, she pushed past the speed limit by twenty kilometers and slowed only when she saw a police car nestled in a laneway by the public school. She was almost home by that point, though, and did the speed limit the rest of the way.

The house was dark. Ultear grabbed a mini shovel off the front deck before she entered, just in case, and tiptoed up the stairs. Her mother was sleeping, she could hear the gentle intake and exhale of her breaths.

Ultear paused by her bedroom door, thinking out a plan of action. Her thoughts were as sticky as honey, uncooperative. She was wasting time and pushed open her door.

Her room was empty, Flare was gone. Ultear hunted through her entire house just to be sure, even tiptoeing through her mother's room while she slept.

Nothing.

She locked all of the doors but was still uneasy. She locked herself in her bedroom, too. Her phone was back in her hand again and she had her contacts pulled up. Her phone hummed, a text message coming through once again before she could do _anything_. It was Gray asking, _are you coming by?_

She didn't want to stay here but she didn't want to risk leaving her house and getting cornered by another of Ivan's thugs. _Pick me up?_

He barely hesitated, texting _Give me fifteen._

Ultear wrote out a note for her mother that she left on the table, asking her to call her as soon as she woke, and waited up by her window. There were a couple of people that moved past her house in the very early morning light, drunk or high or just young. Finally, she spotted Gray's ancient Malibu turning into the driveway.

He got out and came to the door, and Ultear hurried downstairs to let him in. His hair was a mess and he needed to shave. His clothes were sweatpants and a T-shirt despite the cold.

Ultear closed the door gently behind herself and double locked it.

* * *

A/N (again.): Part of this was setup for a story I'm not sure I'm going to write but *shrugs* we'll see. I always say stupid shit like that when I have a fit of crazy (sorry anyone that caught that Tumblr post before I deleted it) and end up writing it anyway. So. Just. You know. Disregard manic-ness. And fits of craziness. I'm here. I'm crazier than I've ever been, but I'm here.


	7. Chapter 7

I've been bad, I've been wrong, playing a dangerous game

* * *

Gray let Ultear sit in silence when they got into his car. He didn't even put the radio on, which was unusual for him, not that Ultear was in a position to appreciate the inconsistencies in his usual behaviour, inconsistencies that would have told her he was worried. She was thinking about Flare, and she was thinking about Ivan, and she was thinking about the man that lingered by her car. She was thinking about the nagging feeling that someone had been following her for days, and the absolute proof now that she had been correct.

That knowledge made her second-guess every encounter she'd had since the moment she met Flare and stepped into something very real and very dangerous, something she didn't quite understand.

Laxus' card was burning a hole in her pocket. She needed to talk to him, though she was wary. If she _did_ visit him, would she be getting herself in even deeper? Was he part of all this? How could he _not_ be? He was Ivan's son, and Flare's stepbrother.

He'd treated Ivan with a distinct lack of respect, though, she couldn't misconstrue that. He hadn't wiped his shoes before entering the house, he'd yelled at Ivan when he saw what was going on with Flare. So he wasn't an Ivan fan. But did that then mean that he was a friend of Flare's?

She didn't think that was apt, either. Laxus Dreyar was an enigma.

The car stopped. Ultear blinked; they were at Gray's apartment already. Gray turned to her; in the glow of his outdoor light, he looked even less put together than he had in her hallway. There were bags beneath his eyes. He hadn't been sleeping much if Ultear had to hazard a guess. The question was, who was it that was keeping him awake, and did she care enough to ask? She didn't think any answer he gave her would make her smile.

His eyes could burn a hole through her. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

Now that he'd asked, there wasn't any way he was going to drop it until she spilled. She could choose where to tell him, though, and his car in the dark wasn't good for her. "Let's get inside."

He got out of the car first. Ultear rushed to keep up. She didn't want to be out in the open for any longer than she had to be. Which was ridiculous; she'd never been afraid of the dark before and she didn't like starting now. She couldn't make her feet slow any more than she could control her heart rate.

"Hey," called someone from the end of the driveway and Ultear almost screamed. She whipped around, ready to fight _again_ , but it was only Cana slinking up the cracked concrete, a beer in her hand and ripped jeans on her hips. She looked between Ultear and Gray with her eyebrows raised. "I saw you race by my house when you were supposed to stop by. Where's the fire?"

Gray sighed. "I got your money inside. I was going to drop it off in the morning."

"The boss wants it tonight," she informed him.

Gray shook his head and opened the door. "Come in then, make it quick. Ultear was annoyed but that didn't stop her from triple-locking the door once Cana was inside. Gray said, "Give me a sec," and disappeared and it was just Ultear and Cana.

"You look like you've seen a ghost and Gray's pricklier than usual," Cana commented. "What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, Ultear, don't give me that crap. We know each other better than that."

Drunk Cana was much more open than sober Cana, the kind of girl you could tell your fuckups to because she had her fair share of fuckups herself. Most horrifying, though, was that Ultear found herself _wanting_ to tell her. Cana might actually understand.

She opened her mouth; the truth came rushing out. "It's Flare."

Cana rolled her eyes. "It's always Flare."

"It's not _just_ Flare, though," Ultear tried to make her understand. "I put my nose where it didn't belong and I pushed Ivan Dreyar and then he sent someone after me." She wrapped her arms around her body. "Like, a guy showed up at my _car_ when I was leaving Natsu's. He gave me some fucking line about wanting a ride home and when I said no, he tried to grab me and haul me off. Can you believe that? Who the fuck _sends_ someone after a person? That's like—like mafia shit. It freaked me out." There, she said it aloud and the world didn't collapse. She was scared.

Cana's lips were pursed. "I'm sorry, I thought you just said you pushed Ivan Dreyar."

"Thanks, Echo," Ultear responded.

Cana looked at her for a long time. "You know who he is, right?"

"Flare's stepfather or something, but really I think the term asshole will suffice," Ultear bit out. She was unnerved by the intense expression on Cana's face.

Cana shook her head and pulled up her sleeve, showing off her Raven Tail tattoo. " _This_ is Ivan Dreyar."

Ultear didn't understand her at first, then it donned on her. "Raven Tail is his?" Cana nodded her head slowly and Ultear cursed. She knew her hit-first-ask-questions-later attitude was going to get her into trouble one day. "Now what?"

"I don't know," Cana said. "How did things end?"

"With Natsu and this guy Jellal kicking the fuck out of Ivan's lapdog." She couldn't get the image of Natsu moving so violently, silhouetted in the light of his respectable apartment building, Jellal at his side, watching with approval.

"Well," Cana pulled down her sleeve. "The good news is, if Natsu and Jellal Fernandez are getting involved, Ivan's not likely to come after you again, he probably won't want to risk starting a war. The bad news is, you're under the lens of this city's two biggest shakers. Keep your nose clean, Ultear, pissing off the wrong person's how Natsu got into so much trouble." She looked towards the hallway and Ultear realized that Gray had been listening to the entire conversation. His arms were crossed over his chest and he looked agitated. Cana asked, "You have the money?"

Gray unfolded his arms and handed over a taped stack of cash. "Here."

"Thank you." Cana plucked it out of his hands and helped herself to the door. "See ya."

"That's it?" Ultear asked.

"What else do you want me to say? Good luck? You're scrappy, Ultear, you always come out with just a scratched nose." She yanked open the door and stumbled out. Ultear closed it after her harder than necessary.

"Sometimes…"

Gray raised his eyebrow.

Ultear huffed. "I can't tell if she hates me or not."

"I don't think Cana knows," Gray responded.

Ultear turned on him. "She's being dramatic. About Ivan."

"Maybe. Or maybe you should file a police report with my dad."

Just what she needed, more Silver. Aside from that, though, "Then I'd have cops knocking on Natsu's door and fucking things up for him when he's just starting to turn things around." Sort of, at least.

"You already put yourself out there for him. Remember when those guys were tuning him up and you stepped in and you were almost charged with assault with a weapon?" How could she forget? She spent the night in a cell, wondering what the rest of her life would look like with that kind of mark on her record. Gray concluded, "If you did owe him something, you don't now."

He was right. Or at least a little bit. "If Ivan bothers me again, I'll pursue it," Ultear responded, "but not before."

Gray shook his head and disappeared into the kitchen. Ultear could hear him open and close a bottle twice. She found him with a coffee mug full of cheap whisky. "No need to drink on my behalf."

"You're the _only_ reason I drink," he muttered and took another swallow.

"I'm flattered."

"It wasn't a compliment."

Ultear sidled between him and the counter and swiped the glass from his hand. The alcohol burned all the way down her throat and into her stomach and she didn't mind at all. It was probably going to be the only reason she slept that night. "Before I went to Natsu's, I fought with Flare. Kind of."

"Holy fuck. What else?" Gray snapped and took the whisky back.

"You don't get it. She was fucking with my mom," Ultear said defensively.

"How?"

She didn't _have_ to tell him. She didn't want to. At least, not very badly. She'd rather control the rumor mill, though, if Flare started running her mouth to get back at her and twisted the story around to Gray. "I wanted to find something on your dad. Something to make my mom kick him out for good. Flare said she could get into his laptop. So when I went to work the other day, she tried. She couldn't find anything, though, so she started writing notes."

"Notes?"

"Like the kind I used to send you in high school?" Ultear suggested. "The ones you'd burn after, just to clarify."

Gray's eyebrows came together. "Seriously?"

Ultear couldn't tell which part he was annoyed with, her example or her blunder. "I didn't ask her to. She just did it, and now my mom thinks he's fucking around on her and I have to explain to her he's not—or at least that those notes didn't come from an actual girl he was banging—and everything is the fucking _worst._ I'm so shitty."

Gray sighed and filled up the cup again, though he handed it to Ultear. "You're not shitty."

"I feel shitty. I always do stupid stuff like this. It's like it's the only thing I _can_ do. Well, at least." She was horrified to realize that her eyes were stinging. She gulped back whisky and they watered for a different reason. Gray wasn't fooled, though. That was the bad part of living with someone for so long, they got to know all of the ways you tried to bunch your feelings up and smother them.

Gray took the cup from her hand; his body was against hers, warm and comforting. She wondered if he knew how earnest he looked just then. "Everyone fucks up. You're not the kind of person to start a fire and walk away from it, though, which is more than what most people can say. You'll fix it."

Ultear kissed him without thinking too much about it and after a brief, startled moment, he returned it. It took her some time to realize that she wasn't kissing him the way she was _supposed_ to be kissing him. This was much too chaste. Gentle. It said a myriad of unsetting things. She covered up her fumble by trying to make it something else entirely.

She broke away and made him set down the glass of whisky, then led him through the townhouse by the tips of his fingers. She slowed only to peek out the window by the door on the way by, she couldn't help it. There was no one there that she could spot.

In his room, Ultear closed that door, too, and turned on him. Gray let her undo his shirt and his pants without any fight; he met her frantic touches with gentle ones that frustrated her as much as they soothed. The fingers sliding down her spine and pulling up her bunny dress were patient. She wanted roughness. And yet, she felt like she was getting exactly what she needed. So she didn't demand any different.

She tried not to think too hard about that, either, when he laid her down on the bed and put his weight on top of her, fingers between her thighs, mouth on hers. The tension dripped from her body one stroke of his fingers at a time. She came.

Gray waited until she stopped arching and whimpering to put a condom on and enter her. Ultear stopped thinking about the complicated things altogether; she saved that for after, when her body was buzzing and there was a drop of sweat between her collarbones, and Gray was beside her, spent, close enough that it could be intimate. If she wanted it to be. She did not. She was curious, though. Curious enough to shatter the quietness.

"Gray?"

"Mm?"

"Why did you have money for Cana?"

He took so long to answer, Ultear thought he went to sleep. "It came with the last delivery I did."

"Of car parts?"

"That's what the box was marked," he muttered.

"But that's not what was in the box."

Gray didn't answer her with anything but a light snore. Ultear sighed and closed her eyes. The next time she opened them, there was late-afternoon sunlight coming in through the window, shining on the bed and making her hot. She was alone but her phone was jangling by her head. Gray's caller ID photo was filling up the screen.

"Hello?" Her voice cracked; she cleared it.

"Hey. Finally." Gray sounded more chipper than usual.

"Where are you?"

"I just had to run out for a few. I'll be back soon, though, and I'll drive you home."

Ultear checked the clock. It was two forty-five. PM. "Fuck. I have to go." There was no _way_ her mom would have waited that long to talk to Silver. Ultear threw the blankets off and hunted for her clothes. Her underwear was on the floor, her bra on Gray's dresser. Her dress was kicked under the bed.

Gray was still talking, telling her, "Don't go anywhere, I'll be back in like, forty minutes."

"I can't wait forty minutes," Ultear said. "I'll text you when I get home." That was the best she could do. She hung up despite Gray's bitching and hopped into her clothes. Her phone was lighting up; when it went to voicemail, she saw that her mom _had_ tried to call her. Seven times. And she'd slept through every single one of them.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Ultear hurried downstairs and put on her boots. She locked Gray's door behind herself.

Crisp spring air whirled around her. She made her steps so long, she was basically jogging. A bike kicked to life a street over, and when it turned at the stop sign, Ultear saw that it was Cana. She thought for _sure_ Cana was going to stop when she rolled past her at twenty-five but Cana barely even looked at her. Ultear tried not to sweat it; she had bigger, worse things to think about than Cana's coldness.

A block in and four phone calls to the house later, Ultear waved down a taxi and hopped into the back. For once, she wasn't mad about how fast the driver went, or the cost of going across town. When they pulled into the driveway, her mom's car was still parked where Ultear had put it last night. _So why isn't she answering?_ Her mind flew through a million terrible scenarios. She paid the cab driver and exited without saying thank you.

It was at the front door where she snagged up. What would she do if she entered the house and something really, really weird had happened? She wasn't sure _what,_ exactly, but _something_. Why else wouldn't her mother answer the phone?

 _Just go in._ Ultear rolled her shoulders back and unlocked the door.

Her mother didn't keep her in suspense, she was in Ultear's immediate view, sitting at the kitchen table again, drinking a coffee that smelled like it was many times too strong. She lifted her eyes and pegged Ultear with an expression that was much colder than Ultear had anticipated.

"Hi."

Ur pointed at the chair across from her. "Sit." Off-balance, Ultear kicked off her shoes and entered the house cautiously. She pulled out the chair and lowered herself in and Ur reached behind herself and took the notes Flare had written off the counter. "Tell me about these."

Her mother had a way about her when she was angry. She could make Ultear admit just about anything. She blabbed. "It was stupid and shitty but I was tired of Silver, and the other day you were upset, and I'd had enough, so—"

Ur's throat turned red. "So you got your friend to write these letters."

"What? No. Yes, she wrote them, but no, I didn't get her to. I—"

"She already told me. And apologized."

Ultear's thoughts chugged. "She did what?"

"She came over this morning and we talked about it. She was really upset. I can't believe you'd make her do something like this, Ultear."

Her mind was still struggling. "No—that's not how it went. I wanted to catch Silver being shitty because he's _always_ shitty but when Flare went through his laptop—"

"You got her to violate his personal files?" Ur asked and Ultear saw the bear trap close around her.

"I…" She had nothing.

"I've been really patient," Ur said. "I can't do this anymore, though. I want you to look for an apartment, Ultear, and I want you out of this house just as soon as you find one. We can talk again after you've dropped this stupid vendetta against Silver and have apologized."

Ultear was suddenly furious. "I'm not apologizing. Not about him being a terrible person. The notes? Fine, but you can't deny he's a giant piece of shit."

"Enough."

"He's been fucking other people!" Ultear pressed.

"We're past that now."

"Oh. My god. See? You don't respect yourself to tell him to get lost, so how do you expect him to respect _you_?"

"I said that's _enough_."

"If you're past all that, why don't you tell me why you were crying the other night?" Ultear jabbed. "It wasn't about the damn insurance. No one cries about that."

Ur's mouth got hard and narrow. She stood so abruptly, Ultear thought she was about to be smacked. Ur went to the garbage, though, and ripped through old coffee filters and chicken Styrofoam and plastic that couldn't be recycled and pulled out the paper she'd been leaning over. It'd been torn into six pieces. She threw them onto the table in front of Ultear and opened them up so Ultear could try to piece them together.

She was looking at an image, taken from high up at night. There was a driveway and a car that she recognized, and two people in the front seat that she knew all too well. There was the white bow she almost always kept in her hair, and there was Gray's tattoo sleeve, his arm wrapped around her bare back. Ultear's stomach plummeted. She put on a brave face, though.

"So what?"

Ur looked _livid._ "He's your _brother_."

"Not by blood."

"In every other sense of the word! If Silver saw this… His career could be ruined."

She didn't _care._ "Where did it come from?" But she _knew._ This picture was taken from her very own room.

"I found rolled up in the newspaper that morning," Ur said.

"But you kept it from me when I asked about it."

"I didn't know how to approach it. I _still_ don't. I know you need to stop, though, for Silver's sake. And for your own."

"Because people will talk? Oh, no," Ultear hissed. "They already do. The last guy I was fucking got taken to jail for _killing_ someone. Fucking my brother? That's small-time in comparison."

Ur was giving no quarter. "This is the kind of thing that will follow you for the rest of your life. Make it right."

She wanted to _scream_. Her mother passed by her and mounted the stairs. Ultear chased after her but Ur closed herself in her bedroom and all Ultear could do was stare helplessly at the door, trying to figure out her next move.

 _Leave_ , her mind suggested, and once she thought of that, she knew there was no other option. Her mom didn't want her there any more than she wanted to _be_ there.

She packed everything that she thought was maybe important to her, which turned out to be very little. A couple of books she loved, some hair accessories, clothes and some shoes. That was all. She stuffed every bit of it into her travel bag and threw it over her back. It was so heavy she was off-balance going down the stairs.

She left her mom's boots where they were and put on her running shoes, though they looked stupid with her dress, and stepped outside. The sun was getting low in the sky; it refracted off the roof of Silver's cruiser when he pulled into the driveway. He got out looking totally burned out and exhausted.

"Ultear," he called as she steamrolled past him. "What's with the bag?" Ultear didn't have any words for him; Silver never needed her go-ahead to speak, though, and his deductive reasoning was sound enough, despite her consistently saying he was a bad and lazy cop. "Where are you going to go?"

She knew abruptly that her mother had told Silver all about the notes. Her chest was burning hot with shame. "I don't know. Gray's, probably."

"Come back inside."

"No."

"Don't be stupid."

"See? This is part of the reason I hate you so much," Ultear told him. "You always have this smug attitude."

He didn't apologize. "There was another girl gone missing."

"So what? Girls go missing all the time."

"Not in Magnolia."

She paused. "What?"

He spoke in short sentences so maybe she'd understand. "Last night. A girl. Sorano Agria. She was a nurse at the hospital. She went missing. It's all over the news." She thought maybe the name was familiar but she couldn't exactly place it. Silver added, "It's really similar to how that Strauss girl went missing. Come in, we'll talk about it."

She hated that he was trying to be the bigger, more reasonable person. "That guy's in _jail_. It's not relevant. You know better than I do, not everyone that goes missing ends up dead."

Silver hit her with, "The case against Strauss' accused killer might be getting repealed. There's new evidence to suggest he didn't do it, which means whoever took Lisanna Strauss could still out there."

Ultear wasn't sure what to say to that. She was sure that she didn't want to be there, though, so she kept on her way with her duffle bag over her shoulder. Killers be damned.

* * *

Despite Gray's assurance that he'd only be forty minutes, his house was still empty when Ultear showed, and he wasn't answering his phone. She threw all of her things in his bedroom, positive that he wouldn't deny her a place to stay, no matter how badly she messed up.

Her stomach was cramping; Ultear realized that she hadn't eaten in hours. She tried making herself dinner. The only thing good Gray had was macaroni and cheese. She ate it all greedily, almost finishing the entire box. She washed her dishes then, and, bored, started drinking the whisky Gray had opened last night.

It wasn't very fun drinking by herself.

She thought about texting Cana but wasn't drunk enough for that. She messaged Gray again and told him to get more whisky. He still wasn't answering his phone. She was starting to think it was a problem with her device. She shoved it into her pocket, annoyed, and returned upstairs to find something to change into, something appropriate for a trip to Fairy Tail. She didn't want to be alone anymore.

* * *

A/N: I'm sure I'm going to get questions about it—or maybe not, but maybe you'll be thinking about it. In my universe here, Ultear only knows Angel by Angel, not Sorano. So. Thanks for reading. Thanks for your reviews. Sorry I'm going so slow lately. Life is hard.


	8. Chapter 8

They say I'm dangerous; they think I'm really bad.

* * *

Warm rain made the pavement shine like a large, dirty jewel. Ultear's heels clapped the ground and the noise helped her push out the anxiety she was feeling—darkness made way for dark thoughts. Like, was Silver right and did Lisanna Strauss' killer still _actually_ have a free pass? And, her ever-lingering question lately—was someone watching her?

Those thoughts were smudged away by Fairy Tail's light pouring off the building's back wall when she rounded the last corner. Some regulars smoked beneath the glow. A few called greetings to her that she returned with a short wave of her hand.

Here, the parking lot in front of Natsu's building, Silver and her mother all felt far away, exactly as she hoped.

Cana's bike sat by the doors, leaning on the kickstand. Ultear eyed the seat. She'd been on it more than a few times and liked the way the wind felt rushing through her hair. She missed the freedom of those days.

The doors opened and music poured out and her thoughts scattered. She gaily entered the bar to the music of Glorious Sons.

People were everywhere, dripping drunkenly down the walls in the corners, swaying by the bar, clumping by the doors to the washrooms. Ultear wasn't interested in any face in particular. She drank them all in as she sidled up to the bar and ordered a Long Island. With it in hand, she people-watched.

There was a flash of pink hair near the washrooms that could have been Meredy, though by the time Ultear stood to get a better look, she was swallowed by the crowd again. She recognized one of Zeref's associates at the other end of the bar. August, she thought his name was. He caught her eye and held it. She always thought he had dead eyes. Cold and unfeeling, except for on the odd occasion they filled with rage. He gave her the creeps. She had to look away and found a much more welcoming sight.

Elfman was where he _usually_ was, sitting in the corner and watching Cana with the same tortured expression he _always_ did, and Cana was watching Laxus playing pool in the back corner, bending at the waist and laughing raucously when he made a bad shot. She was drunk. But Cana was almost always drunk.

Like she felt her eyes on her, Cana straightened and took Laxus' beer bottle from his hand, and hers off the table next to them. She said some words to him and their tablemates and started over. Her eyes were on Ultear and they were glinting in a familiar, exhilarating way. She finished both bottles of beer on the way and dropped them to the bar next to Ultear's drink.

"More of the same," she told the bartender and he went to do her bidding. Cana kept looking after him while she asked, "Where's your date?"

"I'm here by myself," Ultear responded.

Cana glanced at her sideways; her surprise was evident. "Did they bail?"

"I go out by myself." She sounded defensive, even to her own ears.

"Almost never. Not when you can avoid it." She faced Ultear completely and asked guilelessly, "Does that mean Gray and Juvia worked things out earlier?"

Jealousy was a skilled carver, whittling her into something ugly. She downed the rest of her drink to avoid answering. Cana knew, though. "He didn't tell you he was meeting up with her?"

"Why should he?" Ultear said finally.

Cana tapped her fingers on the bar. "Because you have a thing."

"We fuck. He goes back to his crazy girlfriend and we fuck again. That's not a thing."

"We have different definitions of things," Cana said at last. There were sharp words on Ultear's tongue but the bartender had returned. Cana said her thank you's and when she was done with that, she pegged Ultear with a serious look. "I heard what happened with your mom."

Ultear's eye twitched involuntarily. "What happened with my mom?"

"She found out about you and Gray and told you to get another place."

"How would you know that?"

"One of the Raven Tail guys."

Once Ultear knew that she had no trouble tracing it back to its source. Flare had a damned big mouth. And _why_? She couldn't find Flare's angle. "It's fine."

"Did you find a place to stay?"

"I'm figuring it out."

"So no," Cana reasoned.

"I said I'm figuring it out," Ultear finally snapped and Cana recoiled.

"Jesus, I'm just trying to help."

Anger flamed deep in Ultear's chest. "Just because you found the guts to tell your father who you are and you have Sunday dinner together now doesn't mean you have your shit together. You have Raven Tail tattooed on your arm, you still get drunk almost every night, and you still find fuckboys to take home, so just focus on your own stuff before trying to fuck with mine."

Cana's eyes got flinty-hard. Ultear prepared herself for the lash-out. But Cana got her beer and walked back to the pool table. Laxus looked past Cana and caught Ultear's eye. She rolled her eyes and shook her head and turned away. The bartender came by and she flagged him down.

"Another Long Island."

"Sure." He took her drink. Ultear sat back in her seat and watched the screen above the bar numbly. Two hockey players were beating each other ruthlessly. Then copper red caught her eye and she knew that the girl moving through the crowd away from the bartender was Flare.

And she was shameless, coming next to her and inhabiting the space that Cana had just vacated. "Hey, baby."

"Don't," Ultear warned sharply. Cana had put her in a foul mood and Flare was just the girl she wanted to take it out on.

"What's wrong?"

"How about you told my mom I got you to go through Silver's fucking laptop?" Ultear spat.

Flare bit her lip so hard, Ultear was worried about it bleeding. When she let it go, her teeth were imprinted in the sensitive flesh. "I did it for you."

"And the pictures? Was that _also_ for me?"

"Of you and Gray?" She looked _pleased._ "He'd only hurt you, Ultear. I told you that. And look. His girlfriend got a flat tire and he abandoned you to go to her."

A flat? That's why Juvia called Gray, and that's why he was meeting with her. Ultear wanted to laugh and she wanted to scream. She did something more practical, pulling on accusation. "Can we add spying on people to the list of psycho things you're doing?"

"I'm trying to do what's best for you," Flare said. "He'll only hurt you."

Ultear's drink came. "At least he won't spy on me or my friends or lie to my mom about shit I didn't do."

Flare's eyes raced across Ultear's face eagerly. "Did she tell you to get an apartment like she said she was going to?" Ultear only stared at her and Flare glowed. "Of course she did. I was looking at apartments, Ultear. One big enough for the both of us. They want it filled immediately. We can get it tomorrow. Tonight, we can stay at my friend's house and—"

"No," Ultear said sharply. "I want you to find a hole, Flare, and I want you to fall into it. And die, preferably. I _never_ want to see you again."

Flare recoiled. "Ultear—"

"Get out of my face. Get _out_." Ultear shoved her when she didn't immediately move. Flare toppled back into the man behind her, who slopped his beer all over his lap. He groused loudly and pushed Flare back into a standing position. Flare's hand flexed. The slap Ultear was expecting never came, though. She stormed off. The back door closed loudly behind her.

The man glared at Ultear. She didn't apologize, though maybe she should have. She faced forward again and swirled her drink with her straw. It went down better than the others had. When it was done, she ordered one more. By the time _that_ was nearing the bottom, she wasn't thinking about Flare. She wasn't thinking about her mom or Gray. She was as drunk as she accused Cana of being. Drunker, maybe. She felt separate from herself. And from the bar. And from the stool. And from everyone around her.

Her phone was ringing; she could feel it in her pocket. She lifted just the edge out and saw it was Gray. She let it go to voicemail because fuck him. Then she remembered that all of her stuff was at his house and groaned aloud.

"Hey," said someone behind her. Ultear turned and saw August had moved from his side of the bar to hers. He belonged in Zeref's truck, driving it back to his apartment after Zeref lifted a vehicle for August's shop. _Not_ in Fairy Tail's bar. _Not_ sitting beside her.

"Hi."

"It's been a long time."

"Not long enough," she muttered under her breath.

He must not have heard her. He looked her up and down and, very distantly, she knew what he wanted. "What are you drinking, Ultear?"

"I'm okay."

"Come on, let me buy you a drink." He waved at the bartender. "Get me another beer and whatever she was having."

"No, thanks," Ultear told the bartender in what she hoped was a firmer voice.

August said something. The bartender responded. Ultear couldn't focus on _anything_. She could slide down the bar right now and sit on the floor. It looked like a better place to be. Less loud. Less hostile.

A text came through her phone. It was Gray again. Ultear had a hard time focusing on his words. Something about his house. And the door and her. She silenced him. Natsu texted almost immediately after asking her if she made it home okay. "Zeref gets phone calls, you know?" she said suddenly. "Natsu says he wants to see me but if he _really_ wanted to, he'd call, don't you think?"

"Forget about him." Ultear felt fingers on her leg, sliding toward her thigh. She blinked bleary eyes and saw August again. "Are you here with anyone?"

His intentions were the only clear thing in her mind. The repulsion she felt pushed away the numbness. "Not in a fucking million years, August."

He muttered something like _bitch_ as she stood. Ultear flipped him off and set her sights on the other side of the bar. It was so full now, she was shoulder to shoulder with girls in skimpy clothes, men with cigarettes behind their ears. Laughing faces and hollow eyes staring her down. All these people knew her secret, she thought when her phone started ringing again. She wanted to scream at them as much as she wanted to find a wall and slide down its face, onto the floor and not move again.

Someone jarred her against exit and Ultear fell outside. The night breathed around her but she felt none of its earlier menace. She was too drunk. Drunker than she had any right to be. The thought was fleeting, there and then gone as she leaned back and smiled stupidly at the sky.

The tip of her toe got caught on a parking bumper and she listed forward. Someone was there to catch her. A girl. She'd come up from the small ravine Magnolia tried to call a ditch and held her around the shoulders.

"Careful."

"I'm fine."

"Actually, you're drunk, Ultear." None of Flare's rage was in her voice, she sounded gentle and reasonable. Like someone Ultear could trust when she suggested, "Let me take you back home. To Gray's," she corrected. "That's where you're staying, right?"

Ultear pushed her back. "No."

Flare stumbled then righted herself; she seemed like the kind of girl that could always end up back on her feet. "You're mad. I know. I'm sorry—"

"I'm not just _mad,_ Flare," Ultear said. "I _hate_ you. You—you fucked up my life."

"I tried to make it _better_ ," Flare rebuked. "You just need to listen to me. If you did that, none of this bad stuff would be happening to you right now."

"If I listened to you, I would have cut out everyone in my life except Flare." Ultear sneered and started walking again. Everything in her periphery was too soft. She felt _wrong._

"What's so wrong with that? No one loves you like I do."

"Holy hell." _Love_? She was crazier than Ultear gave her credit for. "You're obsessive and gross and you need to fuck off."

Headlights illuminated Ultear's legs. She turned back around and caught a glimpse of Flare's face. So much unfiltered rage twisted her from someone beautiful into someone ugly. And terrifying. Ultear's heart cramped. She stuck out her hand, ready to flag down a stranger if it meant getting out of there, but the car that slowed was familiar. Laxus' Monte Carlo.

Pavement and rubber squeaked as the tire hit the curb. Flare backed off and Ultear approached. The front seat was taken so she got in the back. The scent of cologne and air freshener swept around her and the fear settled down enough for her to assess who was in the car. Laxus in the driver's seat, Cana in the passenger's. As soon as the door was closed, Laxus started driving.

Ultear expelled her breath and flopped back into the backrest. "You have _no_ idea how happy I am to see you. Thanks for stopping."

Cana turned around to look at her. All that curling hair rested on a black leather jacket and fell between the place where her breasts were lifted and pushed together. "You're popular tonight, huh? August, now Flare?"

Ultear rolled her head on her shoulder and felt like it was just going to keep on going, onto the floorboards. "August I can handle. Flare, though. She's so crazy."

"I told you that."

"But by the time you told me, it was too late," Ultear whinged.

Cana studied her. There was none of the hatred Flare expressed and no pity. Cana was good like that. She had no use for dramatics.

They passed beneath a streetlamp and Cana was momentarily illuminated. She'd been wearing lipstick when this night began. Now it was rubbed and smudged.

Ultear realized she'd been reaching for her when Cana caught her hand. She placed it back in her lap and asked, "Who's supposed to be picking you up?"

Ultear felt unashamed and without inhibition. Like she did in that stranger's apartment. Until it was time to look for her eyeliner and money was being pressed into her palm.

She shook the thoughts away. "I walked here."

"By yourself."

"Yeah."

"And crazy Flare's still out there, looking for you," Cana reasoned. "We can drop you back off at the bar. Stay inside and I'll call Gray to come get you."

"No."

"Then—"

" _No_. I don't want to go back."

Cana was a truth-seeking blade. "Because of Juvia?"

"Just because," she sulked.

Laxus fiddled with the radio until Tool's _The Pot_ came on. Ultear felt like she was falling down a long, deep and dark rabbit hole. She wasn't afraid because the bottom was going to be spongy and soft.

They turned a corner and Fairy Tail came back into view. They'd driven around the block while they decided what to do with her. They passed by Flare again. She was in the same spot as before, wet-eyed and red-cheeked, her hands clenched together in front of her belly button where she chaffed them so hard, there was no way they wouldn't be chapped.

"Why are we back here?" If they stopped and told her to get out, she'd refuse.

Cana sighed. "We can't let her back out, either that creep August will pick her up or Flare will find some dank basement to keep her in forever."

Ultear shuddered.

"So what am I doing?" Laxus sounded impatient and annoyed.

"Drop her off at her house," Cana decided.

Her mom's? "No," Ultear managed.

Cana turned so she could look into the backseat. She was shadowed but no less beautiful and Ultear felt a deep, dark pang. Cana was like a phantom limb. She would always hurt. "If not your mom's and not Gray's, then where?"

Her head was spinning so badly, full of so many confusing and conflicting thoughts.

"Ultear? He needs to know where to bring you." Cana was close again. Streetlamps shone off her wetted and alcohol-soaked mouth. She reached back and moved a lock of hair away from Ultear's face that Ultear didn't remember being there. Her thumb pressed against her lips before Cana took her hand away. That's how Ultear found the bravery to do something that would ensure she wouldn't have to go home and she wouldn't have to go back to Gray's.

Cana pulled back and touched her mouth. Only then did Ultear think about what she'd done. She didn't know if she could apologize. That required a voice and she thought hers had run away. Ridiculous. Voices couldn't run.

She took in a breath to dissolve into laughter. Cana touched her cheek, though, and the feeling went away. Cana's kisses were always heady, she was just that kind of girl, and after months of being without them, Ultear felt like she'd been picked up and dropped and now she was freefalling, except instead of hitting the ground and breaking, she was pushed back against the backseat as Cana climbed back between the driver's and passenger's.

Something in the front got kicked, a coffee cup, perhaps. Laxus swore and the car wobbled. Someone honked as they drove past. Then they straightened out and Cana was there with her and Laxus was asking questions that never got answered.

Ultear could barely remember how to move her lips to kiss. Cana left her mouth and kissed her throat. Ultear _could_ put her head back against the headrest. Streetlamps whirled past.

 _I'm dying,_ she thought when her lungs forgot to expand. _No, I'm really, really alive_ , she rebuked a second later when her body did the simple things her mind overthought.

Cana grabbed her breasts and Ultear felt every little thing. Her hands went away and without them tethering her to the world, she thought she was nothing and no one.

They passed beneath another streetlamp and Cana became visible in its orange glow. She was sitting up, one leg on the seat, the other on the ground, and Ultear was beneath her. Her jacket came off, and her shirt, too, so she was only in a bra and her jeans. Laxus was saying something else that Ultear could not, for anything, make out.

Wet kisses passed the time between Fairy Tail and Cana's house. The car parked and the driver leaned back. Cana went away and it was only in her absence that Ultear appreciated that she'd been rubbing between her legs, beneath her underwear. Cana returned with Laxus' kiss wetting her lips. "Come on."

Cold air rushed into the cab. Ultear moved through it, a ghost. Up a set of steps and into a house that was familiar and also totally strange. Cana had redecorated since last fall. She'd gotten new couches and her TV was better.

Someone ushered her in deeper and up a set of stairs. And left. Through a doorway that led into Cana's perpetually messy room. She'd squeezed a bigger bed in there, too. It was now a double, at least. Maybe a queen, there was such little floor space.

The time between seeing the bed and moving to it was truncated. When she turned, Cana was more naked than she'd been before. She was in Laxus' arms and undoing his pants. Ultear watched each of their movements and it was like a movie was playing in fast forward. She couldn't connect all of the touches in a succinct stream—one moment Cana was tugging at Laxus' belt, and the next, his pants were open and she was sinking to her knees. Then, his hand was closing on Ultear's wrist and pulling her forward. Her bunny dress was yanked up over her head. She shivered in her underthings, though she wasn't exactly cold. Then he pulled her in and kissed her and she forgot that it felt like she was rattling apart.

Still on the ground, Cana pulled on her underwear and Laxus her bra and Ultear couldn't help but think that their roles had reversed. Except Natsu was Laxus, and there was no sweet, cloying heroin to tempt her sanity. This was something else. Something maybe even more dangerous. It blacked out her thoughts as she got to her knees and made every movement seem simultaneously effortless and so, so difficult.

Something _was_ wrong. She couldn't do anything to stop it, though. She didn't really feel like she had to.

* * *

A set of jeaned legs stepping over her brought her awake. It took her a long time to recognize Laxus' blonde hair and large shoulders leaving the room in the orange light of morning. She turned her head. there was a pillow under her, and blankets snagged around her feet, and an arm draped over her middle. And knees in her shoulder. She lifted her head. Cana was the wrong way on the bed, her head resting on Ultear's thighs. She wore only a pair of underwear, blue and black striped ones.

Pain stabbed through Ultear's eyes. She closed them and tried to recall the night before. Only snippets were clear. Flare and Fairy Tail and Laxus' car and Cana's bed. There was a dull aching between her legs and she pieced the rest together.

The toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened. Laxus didn't return to the room, though, he continued downstairs. Ultear disentangled herself from Cana and snagged her dress from the floor, then staggered to the washroom. She felt sick and dull. Not at all like she'd had only three Long Islands.

She tried to remember the last time she felt like this in the morning. The memory was there for the taking. The first time she met Flare. When she'd been so drunk, she couldn't have bothered asking for a condom.

She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hair was a tangle and her eyes were dark-rimmed. The question was there for her to ask, but she was afraid to voice what she was thinking. Besides, _how_ would Flare put something in her drink?

 _When she was talking to the bartender?_ When she was sitting beside her, maybe? Or _any_ time in between, when Ultear wasn't watching her?

 _Someone would have noticed_.

But maybe the bar was _so_ full, no one had really been paying attention?

Ultear pushed her fingers against her eyes and tried to _think_. Flare had been waiting for her in the parking lot. _'You're drunk. Let me take you home.'_ And the mean, malicious curve to her mouth. The _surety. I'm going to win something_ , that surety said. _It's mine._

Ultear cranked on the cold water and splashed her face to loosen the knot of terror tightening in her chest. It wasn't really working. She peed. She drank water straight from the tap, and then she exited.

Cigarette smoke wafted up from the kitchen. Ultear followed its scent and found Laxus opening the back sliding glass door to Cana's modest porch. He was still shirtless; the cold air didn't seem to bother him. Ultear opened the door and followed him out. It was damp, but there was also a hint of warmness on the breeze. The apple trees would be blooming soon.

"Morning." Laxus only glanced at her. Like, how dare she interrupt his morning cigarette. She didn't care. "I want to talk about Flare."

"It's way too fucking early for that."

"It's ten." The microwave had said so.

He blew out a lungful of smoke. "Fine. Let me sum up everything about Flare you could ever possibly hope to care about. Every other week, she melts down and leaves home. She calls my dad Daddy and hopes he'll slip one day when she hugs him goodnight. She's happy, and then she's V from Vendetta. When she was sixteen, I watched her grab a mouse with her bare hands and take it outside and like some fucking witching ritual, she stabbed it with a hawthorn and watched it die."

Ultear remembered the hawthorn tree. The one Ivan said shrikes liked. "Those mice weren't there because of the birds. Why didn't you tell your dad?"

"He knows."

"Then why didn't you—"

He raised his eyebrows and she silenced. "Why do you think the Strauss case is being reopened?"

Lisanna Strauss again. It was like she was haunting her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Before she went missing, she and Flare were a thing. Flare was mad because Lisanna kept talking to this kid Bickslow. Madder than I've ever seen her. She was jealous."

Wind cut through Ultear and moved her hair in front of her face. She didn't bother to fix it, remembering instead Lisanna's picture from the news and Flare's lockbox. "She keeps a lock of hair. Silver."

He let out another stream of smoke. "If I were you, I'd be locking the doors."


	9. Chapter 9

A different kind of danger in the daylight  
(I can never let go)

* * *

Ultear watched Cana come down the stairs. She was in a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, her hair in a top knot. She looked at Ultear nursing a cup of coffee and Ultear's stomach flopped nervously. She was a master pretender, though, and hid everything under a mask of false interest in her cup. Her stomach felt like it weighed a million tons and the coffee certainly wasn't helping.

"Is there any of that left?"

What a normal question. Ultear strove to be normal as well. "Yeah."

Cana poured herself a cup and sat opposite Ultear at the chipped linoleum island. "Where's Laxus?"

"He left about five minutes ago."

"Typical. Steps in; steps out without saying goodbye."

"Kind of like you," Ultear surprised herself by saying.

Cana studied her. "You used to like that."

Ultear had no words to explain herself.

Cana, thankfully, let it go. She sipped her coffee and made a face. "It's like tar."

"I haven't got the nerve to try any yet."

"It's not worth it." Cana took her cup from between her hands and dumped it down the sink. She started brewing another pot. While the coffee burbled, she leaned her hip against the counter and studied Ultear.

Ultear didn't know where all this bravery was coming from but she asked, "Do you regret last night?"

"I was the one that invited you here. Do _you?_ "

"I had other places I could go," Ultear fibbed.

"Good."

 _Good._

Cana shook off the awkwardness like a wolf shook off snow. "Listen, a Raven Tail guy's coming by."

"Okay."

"So I'll need you to scram before then."

"Because he'll tell Ivan I'm here and you'll get in shit?"

Cana filled her lungs. "I don't know."

That was as good as yes. She didn't want any more trouble. Ultear stood and showed herself to the door. Cana came to her side while she yanked on her scattered boots. She took Ultear's hand before she could escape, though, and squeezed. Ultear searched her eyes; Cana wore the stoniness she'd perfected over the years. She released Ultear and closed the door quietly after her. Ultear felt her eyes on her as she walked down the street.

A car passed her, a black Civic. The driver's stared her down. She recognized him even beneath his bruised face. Natsu had left Kurohebi with more blue skin than pink. Ultear felt a swell of malicious satisfaction; for a moment, she felt part of something bigger than herself, and she liked it. She could find Jellal and tell him she wanted to never feel targeted again. He'd offer her the same kind of protection he offered Natsu. She'd be dangerous and untouchable.

The sun was midway up the sky, climbing for freedom. It was warm. The rays dug into her jacket and made Ultear sweat. There was a breeze, though, and that niggled under the hem of her dress and reminded her it was still early spring.

She went left at the fork in the road and Gray's house came into her line of sight. His car was sitting crookedly in the driveway; he'd backed it up badly and didn't bother to fix it. The front porch light was still on. He'd been out late or he left it like that.

Ultear's stomach again did somersaults on his stairs and her mind imagined all the things she willed it not to. She'd walk in and Juvia would be in his kitchen in the little silver nighty Gray favoured. She'd be wide-eyed and concerned when she saw Ultear. She'd ask politely _what are you doing here_ , and then sprinkle the conversation with little things that let Ultear know in no uncertain terms that Juvia considered Gray _hers_.

Nervousness was replaced by annoyance. Who the fuck was Juvia to place ownership on someone? Especially Gray?

When the time came to either knock or waltz in, Ultear lifted the dead potted plant at the end of the concrete patio and found Gray's extra key. His door popped open and she walked in with her head high like she belonged.

Coffee permeated the air. Good stuff. Better than Cana's. There was a tap running. It shut off immediately after Ultear closed the door. Gray came around the corner and pinned her with an accusatory look. "Where the fuck were you? I called your mom and Meredy and even Natsu and no one had seen you."

Ultear hunted around his shoulder for Juvia but couldn't see her. "Where is she?"

"Who?"

"Juvia."

Gray looked confused. "At home? Where she should be."

Ultear blurted, "She didn't stay here?"

"No. Why would she?"

"Because she called you."

"So?"

"So you do the same thing every time. She calls you, you run to her, you fuck, and suddenly you're a thing again."

His mouth flattened. "She called me because she had a flat and she has no one else. I changed it for her and she drove home."

There was no accounting for the knot that untied itself in her chest. "Oh."

Gray crossed his arms over his chest. "That's why you didn't come last night?"

She hid her face with her hair when she bent over to undo her boot. "I got caught up."

"With?"

"Cana." His jaw muscle tightened but aside from that, he had no tell to show that he was annoyed. Ultear changed the subject. "Did Juvia run over a nail or something?"

"Her tire was slashed in the Fairy Tail lot."

"By who?"

He threw his hands into the air. "Who the fuck knows? No one saw anything."

Ultear straightened. "Weird."

"Yeah. Annoying, actually."

"But luckily she had you to run to her side."

Gray lifted his eyebrow. "I couldn't leave her."

"Of course not."

He wouldn't give her the satisfaction of an argument. "I'm making breakfast. Come eat with me and tell me what's going on with you and your mom, so I know why I'm harboring you and why my dad keeps calling, looking for updates."

There was no point poking him and prodding him to get more of a rise, he wore a stubborn expression. He would not bite. "Let me shower first."

Gray waved her on and she helped herself upstairs. He'd put her bag in his closet for her. The gesture was gentle in surprising ways. Ultear thrust the thoughts from her head and pulled out clothing. Torn up black jeans and a loose-fitting white top that showed off her bellybutton at times.

Gray's water pressure was garbage. There was a lot of calcium buildup on the showerhead so it hurt her skin. She was able to wash Laxus away, though, and with the memory of his touch gone from her skin, the memory of his words was almost gone from her mind, too. She didn't want to think about Flare snatching up mice with her bare hands and skewering them on her hawthorn tree. Those thoughts made way for others. Like the squirrel she found in her mom's car. And the dog Silver found on his cruiser.

She dried and dressed and when she came back downstairs, the smell of pancakes was filling the kitchen. She folded herself into the island chair. Gray's house was almost identical to Cana's, right down to the chipped linoleum.

Gray remained focused on the frying pan. "So?"

"So I left home. And I was hoping I could stay here. For now. Until I can figure something else out." She could pick up more shifts at the museum, maybe. Or get another job waiting tables. She'd do anything.

Gray lifted a pancake off the bottom of the pan and slapped it onto a plain white plate. He handed it to Ultear.

"So? Can I?"

"You know you can," he said. "I don't know why you bother asking when you already left your stuff here."

Her neck was hot. "Does it inconvenience you?"

He brought in a deep breath and held it, and her eyes. He let it out. "It's fine."

 _It's fine_ didn't sound like it was fine. "I'll ask around. See if I can stay with someone else."

"Like Cana?"

Ultear shrugged. "Maybe." Except, she'd be kicking her out every time a Raven Tail member showed up at her house.

Gray put another pancake on her plate. "Don't. I want you to stay."

He sounded sincere, even if he wouldn't look at her. Ultear grabbed the syrup and doused her pancakes. She was halfway through eating them when Gray turned off the stove and came to join her. "Any news on the Flare front?"

Ultear cut her pancake more aggressively. "Oh. You know. Nothing major. I think she roofied me, though."

"What?"

Ultear set down her fork, happy to have his full attention. "Okay. I know it sounds crazy but listen. When I first met her, she was in the back of this guy's car. He invited me in but I was going to say no." She was thinking about Zeref that day and that guy's dark hair and dark eyes had reminded her too much of her ill-fated and sub-par romance. "Then I saw her and…" she shrugged. She liked the wildness in Flare's smile. "So we hooked up. We were drinking and I was so wasted. More wasted than I've ever been. I did things I never would have done normally." She wanted to tell him and she didn't. She might feel better afterwards. She might just be more ashamed. Gray never asked for the gritty details, though, so she didn't have to elaborate on the money pressed into her palm.

"This is the night we went to your Nan's?"

"Yeah. I thought… I thought that guy put something in my drink."

Gray's jaw twitched again. "He drugged you?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"And you didn't tell anyone?"

"The police again?" Ultear asked. "And what would they say? They'd do a rape kit and see that everything was consensual. They'd talk to Flare and she'd say that we were drinking and she didn't remember who this guy was. And it'd go nowhere. The only thing that'd come out of it is your dad telling me the dangers of going to Macy's and my mom would scold me for climbing into stranger's trucks."

"You could have told me."

"To what end?"

He didn't seem to know. "Keep going."

Ultear spat out the rest, telling him how she went to Fairy Tail last night and saw Flare. How afterwards, it was like she had seven long islands, not three. How Flare met her outside and was trying to convince her to let her walk her home. "I don't think she was being helpful." She had a hard time remembering what happened between Laxus' Monte Carlo and Cana's kitchen the next morning but she remembered clearly the expression Flare wore when she was interrupted. "She's actually, literally insane. Laxus—that's her brother, I guess. Sort of—told me this crazy story about mice and a hawthorn tree and how Flare had killed them and stabbed them and I found a piece of hair in this box she has and her and Lisanna Strauss were a _thing_ before Lisanna went missing. The police are opening up her case again because they don't think that kid from Clover actually killed her. And I'm _freaking out._ "

"You think it was Flare that orchestrated this whole thing?"

"I guess. She was spying on _you_ ," Ultear said. "She knew all about Juvia's tire and—" she trailed off. "You said her tire was slashed?"

"Yeah, but why would Flare do it? They don't' even know each other."

"To try to alienate me," Ultear determined. "I told her about you and Juvia, how you always go running to her." Gray pegged her with an annoyed look that Ultear ignored. It was _true_. "She probably thought if she did that, you two to get back together knowing I'd be mad then when I had nowhere else to go, she'd offer her friend's place again."

"Again?"

Ultear waved him off. "She wanted me to go to her friend's house. She said she chose an apartment for us and we could go see it and move in immediately or something."

"Apartments don't work like that."

He was right. "God. Do you think she's been planning this for _weeks_?" Her skin was _crawling._

Gray shook his head. "I have no idea. You shouldn't put yourself in situations where she can get at you, though. And you should _actually_ tell the police this time."

Gray was right. This was different than keeping Natsu out of trouble. There was one thing, though. The police would want proof and the only thing Ultear had was suspicion and suspicion would get her nowhere. She'd tell the police and then what? Silver would tell them that she was acting out, probably. She'd gotten this girl to go through his personal things and when Flare betrayed her, she sought revenge.

"I need something more than an accusation."

He understood without her having to go into detail. "They're looking at her now if that Laxus guy is right. Hopefully, you can just stay out of her way until they find something solid on Lisanna Strauss's murderer."

Ultear set down her knife and fork so she could scrub her face. "Do you really think Flare is capable of this?"

"You're the one that knows her. Do you really think she's not?"

Another great point. Ultear thought Flare was capable of many things, given the right provocation. She had that kind of untamed air to her. Pretty on the outside and remote on the inside. "Hell."

"Yeah."

"Why me?"

"Because you attract trouble?" Gray suggested.

"I don't."

"You _do._ You need it."

"What do you mean I _need_ it? You make me sound psycho."

"You _can't_ look at me with a straight face and tell me otherwise," Gray said firmly. "Not the girl that sent me all those notes in high school, not the girl that cornered me on the way home from a party and fucked up my entire life."

With one single kiss. Ultear felt both ashamed _and_ powerful. She smiled in spite of herself.

"Not the girl that hounded Zeref Dragneel even though she knew what kind of person he was."

"Like you hounded Juvia?"

"She hounded _me."_

"If that makes you feel better, but I know we're just alike."

Gray shook his head and came to her side. Ultear looked up at him. His anger was absent because he knew she was right. He took her hand and lifted her to her feet. She didn't know that she needed anything until Gray pulled her up and put her arms over his shoulders and wrapped his arms around her waist.

Ultear spied their reflection in the steel of his fridge and thought, as she had at her Nan's house, that they looked pretty together. Black and black and so, so pale. They were matched. "Do you regret that night after the party?"

"When you kissed me?" Gray's fingers found the skin of her back and his hands were warm. "I wouldn't change anything."

Ultear thought she wouldn't, either. It scared her, but he kissed her and she forgot the feeling. The kiss was deep and gentle and everything she needed just then. She put her hand against the back of his neck and kept him against her mouth. His tongue tasted like maple syrup and chocolate chip pancakes and his hands held her together when she was on the verge of falling apart. He tried to keep it chaste. Ultear didn't _want_ chaste. She wanted it difficult to catch her breath.

She turned her head to the left and he complied, kissing her neck and her shoulders. Her chest. And helped her onto the counter. Her mostly eaten plate of pancakes got pushed aside, the maple syrup fell and the inch that was left in the bottom slowly dribbled out, sticky and filling the air with sweetness Ultear didn't _want._

He touched her breasts through her shirt and her bra and she closed her eyes, accepting the feeling and scrounging for more, so when he went beneath, she was struck as breathless as she'd hoped. He pressed against her through his pants. She wrapped her legs around his waist and his breath hitched. She _did_ need chaos. So what? Gray needed it, too.

Ultear lifted her hips for Gray to get her pants down below her hips. He hoisted her legs up when the material was around her knees and stepped in closer. She had to lean back to let him in; half of her forearms hung over the edge of the counter.

He worked her to a delicate place with his fingers first and finished off with his tongue. Ultear let her head fall back and enjoyed the attention without any thoughts ricocheting through her mind. He straightened between her legs afterwards and pushed his pants down to his thighs. Ultear made the mistake of opening her eyes while he slipped inside her. She couldn't look away from the peaceful and satisfied look on his face. It turned to fierceness when he caught her looking at him.

For all of the care he'd taken with her earlier, he fucked her so hard, her fork fell off her plate and clattered to the floor and Ultear's skin felt raw. He touched her cheek and her lip with forceful fingers but settled for cupping her neck with one hand and her left breast with the other. His grip was _tight_. So tight, she couldn't breathe. His intense expression gripped her and she couldn't look away. There was a lot he was thinking as he pounded into her, and lifting her shirt and bra up over her breasts wouldn't distract him.

Gray pulled her up by the grip he still retained on her neck and crushed their mouths together. His rhythm fell out of synch and his breath got short. A warm sensation built in Ultear's middle and rapidly expanded so when he pulled out and came on her stomach, she came, too. It didn't feel as good with him not inside her; she chased the feeling, though, rubbing her clit and closing her eyes to block out every other sensation.

Sightless, she was surprised when he leaned into her and kissed her. "I love you."

Ultear pinched her eyes to keep them closed. Gray pulled away from her after a moment in which she neither said nor did anything. She listened to his feet slide over the linoleum floor and up the carpeted stairs. He never closed the bathroom door and she knew what he was thinking. What did they have to hide from each other?

When she opened her eyes again, it was surprising how everything was as she remembered. His kitchen was still a mess. There was still a bong in the corner beneath a fuse panel that was supposed to be covered but never was, the sink was piled full of cutlery. The coffee maker was still on, though the coffee pot itself was nearly empty. All these things, Ultear expected. Despite their familiarity, though, nothing looked the same.

 _I love you._

There was paper towel on the counter. Ultear used it to mop up her stomach. The smell of come was in her nose. She washed, too, with the soap in the kitchen sink and threw everything into the garbage. She straightened her clothes, her hair, picked up the fork from the floor and mopped up the maple syrup from the counter. Gray hadn't come back downstairs yet. Good. She needed…

She didn't know _what_ she needed.

To breathe.

Her shoes were on and she was out Gray's front door well before she could really _think_ about what she was doing.

Morning had bled into the afternoon. Cana's bike was missing from her driveway and no one watched Ultear meander listlessly down the street.

 _I love you_.

The wind pushed her in a direction she'd actively avoided since the news broke that Zeref had been arrested. The apartment he'd shared with his brother, when Ultear passed, was boarded up, though it was obvious that someone still occasionally went there, there were footsteps in the fresh mud. Did Natsu still pay rent? So he had someplace to go if he decided he couldn't be the person Lucy wanted him to be? Thoughts like that would make him logical and cold. That wasn't who Natsu was _before_ things with Lucy went sideways, but those months without her had changed him in shocking ways. None of his smiles came without cost now. Like his brother. And Ultear liked to see him pay. She'd _always_ liked that.

She moved on, unsure of where she was travelling to until she'd arrived at the Magnolia Penitentiary on the very outskirts of town. A large grey building, it's most prominent feature was the guard towers on the south and north ends. The entryway was a small stone house that looked like it'd been pulled from the 1800s and built up around.

All around were wide, freshly green yards behind tall fencing topped with barbed wire. Each yard was vacant of any prisoners, though Ultear watched for movement. Aside from the occasional guard and a delivery van that pulled up the long, paved driveway, through a gate and into the back, there was no one and nothing.

Her heart was pounding at the entrance of the house and she asked herself for the first time, _what are you doing here_?

She had _no idea_. There was just Natsu in her head saying, _Zeref has been asking about you_ , and Gray saying _I love you,_ and Ultear wondering _what does that mean_? She thought she knew. Once. Before Zeref killed a man. When everything was a game, right down to her fucking Zeref's brother to make him jealous. To satiate some twisted little hole in her belly. To gain control.

She opened the door. It _clicked_ like with the turn of a key, it could lock up tight. Inside smelled like papers and ink and warmed plastic, like a server room. There were others in the room, men and women that looked like they'd come from rough roads.

A female guard looked up from behind plated glass at a tall counter. Her face was as straight as a ruler's edge when she addressed the woman in front of her. "You're not on the approved list, Miss Cassidy."

"Mister Grendlow was supposed to add me."

"Well. When Mister Cassidy makes his phone call tomorrow, tell him you want on the list. He'll make the request and pending the warden's approval, you can come by next week during visitor's hours."

"I _told_ him that. He's too stupid, though. Just let me see him." There was a lunacy to Miss Cassidy that Ultear likened to Flare. It was that frantic look in her eye like if she didn't see Mister Cassidy, she couldn't draw her next breath.

"Cannot do. Next."

" _Please_! I need to see him!"

The guard looked over Miss Cassidy's shoulder and found Ultear. "Next!"

Ultear stepped forward. Miss Cassidy was still babbling but two people, a man and a woman in guards' outfits, had stepped forward and started guiding her out.

"Help you?" the guard asked in a bored voice.

Ultear kept her chin up. She would _not_ betray her nervousness here. "I wanted to see an inmate."

"Name?"

"Zeref Dragneel."

" _Your_ name."

 _Oh._ "Ultear. Ultear Milkovich."

She turned to the monitor to her left and typed some things into the computer. Ultear drummed her short nails on the tiled counter impatiently. She didn't know why she thought coming here was a good idea. Zeref wouldn't have approved her as a visitor. He barely acknowledged her when he was free.

"There you are. Ultear Milkovich."

"You found me?"

"You approved the request, didn't you?"

"Yeah," she lied, thinking of Jellal and Natsu and the connections power and association can bring you.

"Visiting hours begin in thirty minutes. Take a seat and we'll let him know he's got someone here."

"Thank you." Ultear showed herself to a narrow padded chair, faded with years of use and abuse, and waited.


	10. Chapter 10

Baby, she's in constant danger, help is very far

* * *

Ultear was unexpectedly nervous when they called her name and several others. Was she a mess? Her hair, her clothes, her makeup? She swiped beneath her eye and wiped away a smear of black eyeliner. She did the other, too, and fixed the white bow in her hair. It probably looked more sloppy than retro just then but what could she do? Stop in front of the glass door and tell the prison to just wait while she fixed it? It didn't seem like a very patient place, and there were three other people behind her, all waiting to get inside.

Her guard, a large burly man that was thick head-to-toe, pulled out a pass card and swiped it in front of a number box at the door. A loud buzzer sounded and the door clicked, unlocked. Ultear had no more time to fret, it was time to enter.

The air was a degree cooler in that short corridor between the administration building and the prison. The fluorescent lights shone on plain grey tile and beige walls. Everything was very monotone and very simple. There was nothing hanging on the walls anyone could use as a weapon and there were no decorations whatsoever.

They went through two more doors, one high security and the other just a normal handled steel one, like you'd find in a portable. It opened to a classroom-sized room that smelled like Fantastic cleaner and something Ultear had difficulty naming. Sweat, maybe. And perfume. And stale weed?

There were others already in there, a woman and two young children, a man with a baseball cap on his head, sitting low on his eyes. He was the source of the weed smell. Ultear looked for Natsu but he wasn't there.

"Take a seat," the guard told her.

Ultear chose one table by a frosted glass window. There were bars on the other side but she could almost pretend, looking out into the large open field beyond, that this was just some strange school. Or a high-tech facility. Not a place for the desperate and the imprisoned.

The clock struck the hour and a buzzer sounded. She jumped so high, she banged her knees off the bolted table. She caught the eye of one of the visiting children, the boy. He snickered at her. She covertly gave him the finger; he laughed louder until his mother scolded him. It was Ultear's turn to smile meanly.

There was another door at the front of the room. It swung open and men started filing into the room. Some of them were tall and thick like the guard, some of them were thin and shaky. Drugs, Ultear thought. She'd seen enough people addicted to the things Zeref peddled to recognize a junkie when they walked past.

Some men looked at her long and hard and some ignored her completely. One came into the room and made straight for her.

Zeref had changed. He's always been as unbending as steel but now there were ragged edges to his stiff composure. She found herself thrilled and horrified. He _had_ killed a man. He _had._ With his bare hands. And this was the consequence of that act. She felt light and jittery and never more _real_ than she did at that moment.

His eyes took in the room with a practiced efficiency, picking out the other prisoners and the guards. Focusing on their guns and their stances. Casing the joint. Had he ever been so good at that before?

Finally, he turned his dark eyes on her. That old, familiar monster, the one that'd chased him endlessly, stirred deep in her belly as he came around to her side of the table with his arms open. She stood for his embrace, though Zeref had never before been very emotionally available. He took her in with hard and wiry muscles and kissed her so openly, Ultear could only let it happen. It went on and on, his mouth against hers, and a small, shallow and desperate sound escaping him.

That monster climbed up from the deep, dark and jagged corner of Ultear's heart and tried to make a fool out of her. She tried to let it, finally clenching Zeref back and kissing him proper, all of his danger, all of his rage, all here for her to taste. It settled on her tongue like sweet poison. She wanted to drink it down even as it choked her.

"This is a visitation room, not a fuck trailer, Dragneel. Fifteen seconds of touching before, fifteen seconds of touching after, no more. You know that," barked one of the guards.

Zeref stepped back and wiped his mouth. He sat. Ultear did, too.

"What was that for?" Her voice didn't shake _much_. Good.

"I missed you," he said candidly.

Ultear hadn't banked on the tangle she'd feel in her chest. Everything was a mess. Coming here had only made that mess worse. "I missed you, too."

He sat forward like he wanted to be closer to her but never reached for her. "Have you seen Natsu?"

Sure she had, beating the life out of a man that wanted to hurt her. Did Natsu think of how close he was to becoming Zeref every time his fist met its mark? Did that scare him? Because it scared her. It made her feel taut as an elastic. Any tighter, and she'd snap. "The other day."

"Tell me about it."

"Don't you see him?"

Zeref shrugged. "He comes now and again but won't tell me anything real. Is he still on H?"

"He has a prescription for Oxies that he won't throw out," she said honestly, "but I don't think he's been taking them."

Zeref grinned almost proudly. "Just like his big brother. It's there if he needs it; he won't, though. Not anymore."

She wasn't so sure of that. How long could he be a capo before the lifestyle got to him and he fell again? "He's living in a nice place now. Him and Lucy." And still using the movie store for something.

"You saw it?"

"I was there the other day."

Zeref sat back and examined her. "It can't be like before. Don't fuck things up for him, Ultear."

His words dug under her skin. "I don't need to fuck things up for him, Natsu's good at doing that himself."

He said once warningly, "Don't."

Just in case she'd forgotten, even for a second, what he'd done. "Can I ask you something?"

"Why'd I kill him?" Zeref predicted.

"I know why," Ultear said. "He was threatening Natsu. What I want to know is how." How had he looked at a man, a living, breathing human being, and beaten him so badly, he died?

"We all have monsters, Ultear. One day, you may even wake up and find yours." His words were chilling and summoning, like he was a demon trainer and she the demon. That creature in her chest lifted its head again and Ultear was presented with an uncomfortable truth. Her and Zeref? They were alike, and he understood that better than she had ever thought before.

If Zeref was bothered by his prediction, he didn't show it. "Tell me what's been going on with you?"

Ultear cleared her throat and smoothed her dress and imagined she felt more put together. Faking it until it was true. That had long been her motto. "Ivan Dreyar doesn't like me."

Zeref's forehead crinkled. "What'd you do to piss him off?"

"He was smacking around his daughter and I shoved him," she said. "He actually sent someone after me when I was leaving Natsu's."

"Go to Fernandez," Zeref said immediately. "Tell him what's going on with Ivan. He'll protect you."

"He already knows. He was there." She could still feel his eyes on her if she tried to remember. Only Zeref had ever looked at her so intensely. She knew trouble when she saw it. Hell if she could steer away from it, though.

Zeref drummed his fingers on the table. His knuckles were cracked and knotted and gnarled more than they ever were before. He'd been fighting in the months he'd been in there. "I don't think you have anything to worry about then. Not unless Ivan wants a war."

Ultear snorted. Zeref didn't crack a smile. "You can't be serious?"

"Fernandezs and Dreyars hate each other. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone with two feet in trouble," Ultear muttered. He looked regretful and she felt terrible. It wasn't a dynamic she was comfortable with and skirted it completely. "I'm not comfortable being the catalyst of a war."

Zeref's melancholy faded. "Don't worry, you'd only be the excuse."

"I have had a _very_ bad few days. You're not making them any better."

"I'm just telling you how it is. Natsu doesn't like it when I lie."

"Five minutes," the guard at the door said.

"Until I have to leave?" Ultear asked. How much time had passed? It felt like she just arrived.

Zeref said, "Visiting hours are short."

"That's not fair."

He smiled sadly. "Tell me about Angel before you leave."

Ultear was once again transported back in time. She was on Zeref's couch; marijuana smoke was choking the air. Angel was sitting on Zeref's lap, drunk, drunk, drunk. Someone had written _666_ and _Zeref's_ on her arm. Someone else, not him. They'd laughed about it. Ultear had seethed. She's seethed when Angel had looked at her and kissed him, and she'd seethed when she'd taken Zeref by the hand and led him back into his room.

And then Ultear had fucked his brother. Petty? Probably. It'd been nice, though. In the dark, her imagination was very good.

"Why the fuck would we talk about Angel?"

"Come on, Ultear. I get no information in here. I have to bribe the guards for the fucking weather. Have they found her?"

"I didn't even know she was missing," she said flippantly.

"Natsu told me they had her picture up in the news the other day. She never showed up for work and the police have no leads."

"Maybe the skank train came to town and she decided it was _finally_ time to get onboard?"

Zeref's expression turned dry. "I'm worried about her."

A grim thought came to Ultear. "Is she on your visitor list?" His silence spoke volumes. "And she comes to see you?" He was still silent. Ultear didn't think it was possible to feel betrayed by Zeref again but she _did_. "You're unbelievable." She wanted to swipe his kiss from her mouth. She wanted to scrub his touch from her skin.

"Have you heard from her or not?"

He was always dismissive of her. It used to make her hungry. Today, it made her angry. "I haven't heard anything but anything she gets, she deserves."

"I don't know why you guys hate each other so much—"

She felt poison on her tongue. "I know she mostly harassed me and you don't really care about anything that doesn't affect you or Natsu but consider this, she fucked your brother just to make me mad." A few heads turned their way but Ultear didn't care. "And you went on as if nothing fucking happened."

"Natsu wasn't in a good place."

"So what the fuck was her excuse?"

"We had a fight. She was acting out."

"I don't know what she did to wrap you around her finger so tight but I think you really deserve each other."

"Come on, Ultear, don't be mad. You know I care about you, too."

The impression of his mouth said so but was it _true_ or was he just missing the life he used to have? "You have no right to tell me not to be mad. You always gave me scraps and expected me to be grateful. I'm fucking done with that. With you."

Silence hung off her words. Zeref stared at her. Ultear worried her lip. She'd never been so blunt. Or so honest. Shockingly, brutally honest, with herself and with him.

He said, "You don't mean that."

She lifted her chin defiantly but couldn't bolster her brave words.

The buzzer sounded, indicating visiting hours were over. Ultear pushed away from the table. Zeref stood, too; he wouldn't let her get away so easily, stepping into her and folding her into a tight embrace she didn't want. "Don't forget to go to Fernandez."

"Fuck yourself."

"Be careful, Ultear," he said steadily. She could feel his jaw working against her shoulder, his breath on her skin.

"Don't ask me to come back." Distance was best where Zeref was concerned. He was a blight, rotting her from the inside out. He was an unattainable goal. He was dangerous.

He let her go; Ultear left without looking back, a guard leading her out. The woman at the front desk made her sign out and she was escorted out the way she'd come in. The sun was setting, blazing orange on grass that was tentatively green. There was a yellow marigold growing on the side of the ditch, one of spring's first flowers.

Ultear stepped on it. She wasn't satisfied. But at least she was a little less confused. She hated Zeref.

She pulled out her phone. There were no calls and no texts from Gray, which was unusual after she'd walked out on him. She hovered over his name. Eventually, she got up the nerve to text him, _I'm on Sideroad Twenty-five._

… appeared and disappeared three times as he constructed a message and deleted it. Ultear never got a text, though. She huffed and closed the app to pull up the internet. She searched while she walked. Nothing came up with _Angel_ and _Missing,_ so she looked up missing girls in Magnolia and had more luck.

Angel was on the first page of the newspaper, _Sorano Agria_ written beneath a photo of her at her graduation. She didn't really look like the girl that sat on Zeref's lap, the one that stole Oxies and Perks from the hospital and sold them on the black market, sometimes on large. She almost looked like a happy girl if not for the shadow in her smile.

Ultear hunted for any information on her disappearance. All the article would say was that she'd parked on a side street near the hospital before her shift and there were signs of a struggle by her car. She'd been missing for four days.

Despite their history together, Ultear hoped she was just on a bender, naked in some man's bed, waiting for the comedown.

At first, Ultear didn't think much about the car coming in behind her. It slowed, though, and caught her attention. She thought it was Gray and turned, a taut half-smile on her face. It was a Towncar, though, and there was a girl hanging out the window. Her hair twisted up like a tornado of autumn colour and her baseball batt came down in fury. It cracked Ultear across the chest at twenty kilometers an hour and laid her flat without remorse.

She gasped at the twilight sky, struggling to get her breath back, faintly aware of the tires crunching backwards over the gravel road. She thought, _they're going to run over me and that'll be it and I can't even move_ , but the tires stopped inches from her head.

Flare got out, and the driver joined her. Kurohebi looked even worse up close than he had when he drove by Ultear that morning. His face was stitched beneath his eye and his lip, all the way down to his jaw, and the skin was the blue-purple of severe bruising.

He grabbed Ultear around the shoulders, Flare got her legs, and they hoisted her together. Ultear writhed. She managed to kick Flare in the stomach and punched Kurohebi in the face. They dropped her back to the ground. Ultear scrambled to her feet to get some space between them but was hit again, this time across her shoulders and at the base of her skull. She was stunned. Her legs collapsed and down she went, half in the ditch on a bed of prickle bushes, and half on the soft shoulder in the gravel and sand.

She didn't fight this time when they picked her back up and stuffed her into the back seat.

"Hurry, before that car comes back," Kurohebi said, and Flare responded something sharp as she got in beside Ultear, so close their hips were touching.

Ultear blinked; her eyes stayed closed for too long. The car was moving and Flare was buckling her in by the time she opened them again. She tried to force Flare's hands aside and was scolded. "You want to be safe, don't you, baby?"

She closed her eyes again and this time, they stayed that way until the car was humping over the concrete of a garage and Ultear's head bounced against the window.

"Careful, Kurohebi, you'll hurt her."

"Isn't that the point?"

"Not before I get the chance to fix her." Flare stroked Ultear's cheek. Ultear backed out of her hold and hit her head again. She had enough dexterity to swear. It was slurred. Flare pouted. "Be careful."

The car sloped down and everything got dark. Ultear worried that her eyes were closed again but after a moment of driving, dim fluorescent lights shone into the interior of the vehicle. Flare looked monstrous as she was, lunatic crazy as she leaned into Ultear and smoothed her hair back. There was nowhere to go. Ultear pushed her back again and Flare shoved her hands aside. They struggled for a moment, then Flare growled and Ultear's cheek stung.

" _Don't_ fight me."

"Get the fuck off me." She'd sound fiercer if she weren't tripping over her words.

"I know you don't mean that. You're just confused."

"No—"

" _Yes_. All these men confuse you and try to turn you against me but once we're away from them, you'll see."

" _What_?" Nothing was making much sense.

The car jerked to a stop and Kurohebi got out. Ultear's door was yanked out from under her. She only tumbled out onto her back after Flare undid her seatbelt. She was still tangled in the shoulder strap when Flare came to loom above her, wrathful and beautiful and horrible.

"You can leave, Kurohebi."

"What if you need me?"

"I won't," she said confidently. "We'll be fine."

Ultear got herself unstuck and shuffled backwards. She was on concrete. A small underground parking garage, she thought. It stunk like meat and iron and urine and was empty of any cars, as far as she could see. Empty of everything except a girl in the corner, dirty and shivering and bound, hands and feet, with a metal chain wrapped around a metal pipe on the wall.

Kurohebi approached her.

Ultear wouldn't have recognized Angel if not for her thin, quavering voice demanding, "Stay away from me!"

Flare rolled her head on her shoulders and watched. Ultear, too, couldn't look away. Kurohebi pulled something small out of his pocket. He crouched in front of Angel. She thrashed and cried and rattled her chains against the pipe but in the end, she couldn't get him away from her. When he stood again, Ultear saw what he'd taken out. A GoPro camera was now on Angel's forehead, its lens pointing anywhere Angel was looking.

She seemed too weak to swipe it away. They'd been starving and dehydrating her since she'd arrived if Ultear had to guess.

Kurohebi came back for the car. "Make sure it stays on."

"I know, I know," Flare waved him off. "Go distract Daddy, make sure he doesn't interrupt."

Ultear was hit with hope. "Help!" Was that really her voice, as wispy as a spring breeze?

"No one can hear you down here. We're beneath _Tartarus_ and they've already got the music going. Sorry, baby."

"Help!" Ultear tried again anyway.

Flare pushed her hard and she saw spots. Her collarbone and chest were likely purple beneath her collar. It'd be a miracle if nothing was broken. "Don't or I'll have to hurt you."

The car drove off and then it was just Ultear, Flare and Angel. Ultear got her breath. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you won't _listen_ to me, Ultear. You run out with Cana and Laxus and then you go back to Gray, and just when I think that's the worst you could do to me, you go back to _him._ "

"Him?"

"Zeref!" she screeched. "You went to him after he hurt you so bad. You're broken. You're broken, and I'm going to fix you."

Ultear didn't know what to say. She felt violated in so many ways. "You've been spying on me, too."

Flare said plainly, "I had to know when you weren't being faithful."

"We're _not_ together anymore. Or ever. We had a thing. And then we didn't because you're a fucking nut job."

"Shut _up_." Flare pushed her again. Ultear fell back to the floor this time, it was so painful. She gasped, and Angel sobbed. " _Shut up!"_ Flare turned on her and raged. Angel fell into a quivering silence.

Ultear forced in another lungful of air. "Why is she here?"

Flare turned back to her. She was smiling again and looking more manic than ever. "She's for you."

"What do I want with her?"

"You can get rid of her, and then we'll get Gray and do the same for him. Cana, too. Silver, if you want, and you'll be free of anyone that's ever hurt you."

Her meaning dawned on Ultear. "Is that what you did for Lisanna?"

Flare shook her head furiously. "Lisanna didn't want to be helped."

"So you killed her. Like you're going to kill me, too, no matter what I do."

"No, no, no," Flare shook her head and pinched Ultear's cheeks between cool hands. "Not you, baby. I love you. I know you can do better. I've seen it. You're just like me. Here." She danced away. When she came back, she had a hammer in her hand. She hauled Ultear up and walked her quickly across the room to Angel's side.

Angel looked up; Ultear stared into the face of the camera. Was this what Kurohebi wanted to see? Her fear? Or did he want to watch her do as Flare wished? Did he want to see her hurt Angel? _Or_ did he want to see Flare denied? Was he fascinated with her violence? Did he think she was going to kill Ultear and then Angel, and he was going to catch it all on film? And then what? Did he _watch_ it?

Ultear wanted to throw up.

Flare pressed the hammer into her hand. "Teach the nasty bitch a lesson."

All Ultear could say was, "You can't be serious."

"I saved her for you. Smash her head in, Ultear. Hit her here." She grabbed Angel by the hair and pulled her face back so she could tap her right between the eyes, under the camera lens. "Make her ugly before you make her dead. Do it. Do it. _Do it._ "

 _Doitdoitdoit._

"Do it or I will and you won't like what happens after."

All of Ultear's nerves twanged. "But if I do?"

"Then I know you actually want to get better and we'll make that happen _together_. You and me." She smiled sweetly. "Don't you want someone who loves every weird piece of you? Someone that won't cast you aside for some whore? Someone that doesn't have a Juvia or an Angel?"

She was sickened all over but for a deep, dark place in her bruised heart that whispered, _wouldn't that be nice?_


	11. Chapter 11

I'm dangerous, I'm a dying breed

* * *

Breaths fogged in the cool, damp air, Flare's, Angel's, and Ultear's. Ultear's chest felt too narrow and her fingers were like rusty bits of metal, corroded to the chunky and damaged handle of the hammer. It felt as heavy as her thoughts.

Flare was unburdened. She moved like a lithely as a viper, still beautiful with a deadly look in her eye, pushing into Angel's side and grabbing her hair tighter. "Do it, baby. Do it for me and do it for you, do it for all the girls people like this bitch have hurt." She spoke to Ultear but looked at Angel. "Do it now when I'm touching her. I want to know how it feels." She was mesmerizing. Her voice dripped like caramelized sugar, so, so sweet but _burning._ Burning through Ultear, melting rationality and making her think insane things.

"Remember when she teased you with all the things you wanted? Remember when she let you kiss her in Natsu's truck? Remember when afterwards, she abandoned you and Natsu to Heartfilia's thugs? Remember when she and Zeref just laughed at you? They did it to your face, and behind your back, when they were sober and when they were high, in front of all of your friends and even when they were alone. They were _horrible_ to you."

"Ultear." Whether Angel was too weak to say anything other than her name was unclear. The sound of her voice was grating, though. It dredged up a hundred images and each one of them made Ultear more frustrated than the last. Angel _had_ been horrible. She'd sit on Zeref's lap and make him touch her in front of Ultear, a smear of a smile on her face, and she would not share. Flare was right, Ultear had _tried_. What was worse was that for a moment in time, twenty minutes back from the hospital, she thought, _this could work. I could have everything I want._ Only to be denied.

And teased.

She brought in drugs and pain and razed everything to the ground. And she walked away. She walked away every time and let them deal with the fallout.

"Now you remember." Flare laughed and pushed against Angel harder, like they were lovers, maybe. Not like she was egging Ultear on to do the unthinkable. "Lift the hammer, baby. Hit her pretty face. Hit her. Fuck her up good and then we can be together. I know you're scared but after you've done it once, you won't even think about the second time. Everything can be easier. You can be free."

There _was_ a monster inside of her. It fed off pain and it fed off hate and it saw her in the truest of light, just like Zeref had. She'd never wanted anything easy. She wanted Gray because she wasn't supposed to. She wanted Cana because she was cold, she wanted Zeref because he was always denying her, she wanted Natsu because he wanted to be hurt, and she wanted Flare because Flare was a wildfire. It was like she _wanted_ to suffer. Not just wanted but _needed._ Angel didn't do this to her. She'd done it to herself.

Flare straightened; she'd gone from smiling to flat-mouthed. "Ultear." She said her name very differently than Angel had. Angel's had been full of pleading. Flare's was brimming with disappointment. "I _told_ you to hurt her!"

"And then what?" Ultear asked. "We go on a rampage, me and you, killing everyone you think deserves it?"

"They've been awful to you. Zeref—"

"No one's ever treated me in a way I never allowed. I _liked_ it." There was something building in her chest; she didn't recognize it as a laugh until it was out in the open, though. It belonged to the darkest corners of the underground garage.

Angel was looking at her strangely. Flare's mouth twitched. She reached for the hammer. "I'll do it myself."

Ultear held it out of her range. "No. Untie her, we're leaving."

Her rage evolved into a dangerously desperate thing. "You can't leave me."

" _Untie_ _her_."

Flare swung again for the hammer; Ultear shoved her so hard, Flare fell to the ground. Her hair wrapped around her neck, a violently red rope, and dragged over the dirty ground. It puffed in front of her red mouth. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were alive with anger.

"Untie her."

Flare got to her feet. Ultear adjusted her grip on the hammer, ready for anything. Except for Flare drifting away. Ultear watched her glide over the concrete and up the driveway they'd come down originally. It was just her and Angel.

Ultear pulled out her phone to call the police. There was no service. She swung back around and focused on the ropes.

Angel said, "I thought you were going to kill me." Her breath and skin smelled sour.

She'd thought so too, for a moment. "Shut up, I need to concentrate."

Angel said, "She hit me with a baseball batt and her and that guy brought me down here."

"I said shut up." The knots were complex and tight. Angel had been pulling on them. The rope dug into her wrists and made them chapped and red; her hands were too pink, too. And she was cold. Ultear could feel her shivering.

Angel couldn't seem to stop talking. "They only let me up to go to the bathroom. And came with me. To make sure I didn't drink any water. Or try to escape—"

Ultear pushed Angel, too, slamming her shoulders back against the wall. "Shut the fuck up and let me _think_."

Angel quieted. Ultear got one knot loose but not undone when she heard Flare's return. She wasn't walking so lightly now, feet dragging on occasion.

"Fuck," Angel swore. Ultear hefted her hammer again and turned around.

"I'm not doing this, Flare. You need to fuck off—"

Flare was carrying a sledgehammer. Its head would bounce off the ground on occasion, creating a flat metallic _clink._ Ultear's hammer, which had seemed so deadly just a short time ago, felt useless now.

"I told you." Flare hefted the hammer and rested it on her thin shoulders. "I told you if I had to do it myself, you wouldn't like it. I should have started with this, though. That's what Daddy says. Always go big."

"What the fuck are you doing?"

" _Fixing_ you," she spat. "I should have known you'd never be faithful, Ultear. I should have known. I do this all the time. Daddy told me that, too. I'd just get hurt again. It'd be like Lisanna _all over again._ I hoped, though, because I really did love you."

"You're insane."

"I'm _heartbroken."_

Ultear didn't believe she'd swing until the hammerhead was actually coming for her. She had to skip back to avoid some broken ribs. Every bit of her body was humming with adrenaline; she temporarily forgot her damaged chest. "Are you for real right now?"

Flare hefted the hammer and tried again, an overhead swing that she followed through, bending her legs. Ultear scurried out of range. Hunks of concrete broke away from the floor, the hammer jarred aside. Flare screamed and renewed her attack. If her arms were tired, she gave no indication, swinging again and again, twirling it around herself to get some momentum and hitting the wall. Ultear's palms were sweaty; she searched for an escape. Where could she go? Every move she made, Flare was there, and she was backing her into a corner.

The last time she swung, Ultear had to bat the handle away; her entire hand went numb; Angel screamed. " _Stop_ it!"

Flare whipped around and looked at her. Angel shrunk beneath her glare but she had nowhere to go. Flare asked, "Why does she protect you? Does she love you? Were you just playing with me this entire time? You don't actually hate each other? That's why you won't kill her, isn't it? Lisanna tricked me the same way, she said she wasn't going to see him but she _was._ You're lying to me. You all _lie_ to me!"

She moved quickly for a girl so burdened, lifting the hammer over her head like it was an axe. Ultear's monster came to the surface as it had the night Natsu was being attacked. She lifted her own hammer and brought it down on the back of Flare's head. Ultear didn't see blood until Flare dropped her sledge and touched the back of her head. She staggered. Ultear hit her again and discovered Flare was right, she didn't even think about it the second time. Or the one after that.

She made Flare ugly first and then made her dead. She beat her until her hands were red. She beat her until strong hands closed on her wrists and then ripped the hammer away. She was pulled off Flare and forced to turn around to face someone unexpected. Silver wasn't supposed to be there. He didn't belong under Tartarus. But there he was with a flashlight and a gun he was struggling to put back in his holster. He was in a suit, the one he wore into work, a vest, and shiny black boots.

His mouth was moving. He was asking her questions. Sound roared in her ears and she couldn't _understand._ He shook her. Ultear felt almost nothing. She kept on feeling nothing, even when he hugged her, the father she never wanted.

* * *

After a doctor cleaned her up and looked her over and deemed that she was dealing with a concussion and fractures to her collarbone, Silver collected her and brought her to the precinct. She changed in the bathroom into a pair of tights and a wraparound sweater. Her other clothes went into evidence.

Then she found herself in the same room she'd been in after she beat Natsu's attackers with a crowbar. Silver was with her. He was drinking coffee laced with espresso.

"How bad is this going to be?" Ultear asked.

"I can't say. It was self-defence but this isn't your first violent offence."

"You mean when those guys were attacking Natsu?"

"When you were nearly charged with assault with a weapon."

"They would have killed him if I didn't do anything. He was outnumbered."

"It doesn't look good."

"It was _self-defence_."

"I'm just telling you the facts, Ultear."

She sat back in her chair and tried to cross her arms. It hurt. She gave up and asked, "How did you guys find me?"

"Jellal Fernandez was on his way to the prison to visit a client and said he recognized you. He wouldn't say _how,_ though." Silver looked her over, waiting for an explanation.

"Natsu's dating his niece," she said. He seemed to accept that. Ultear asked, "Where's my mom?"

"In my office, waiting," he responded.

"Can I see her?"

"That's not a good idea right now, Ultear."

"Is that a nice way of saying she hates me?"

"She doesn't hate you, this is just a lot for her to process. First, she thought you were dead and then this."

Whatever that meant.

"Don't even worry about that right now. Just focus on your statement."

"Okay." What else could she say?

"I'll see you in a few, okay?"

"Where are you going?" She wasn't very fond of the idea of him abandoning her.

"I have some loose ends I have to tie up. Gildarts is going to take care of you."

"I don't want him to do it."

"Can't be helped. Sorry, Ultear. I'll come back when I can."

Her eyes were swimming. She hated that. Almost as much as she hated the pitying look Silver gave her before ducking out of the room. Ultear swiped at her eyes, frustrated, and got herself back under control just in time for Gildarts to come take point. He looked just as exhausted as Silver did, setting himself into the seat opposite. His brown suit was a mess, his tie was loose and his hair was sweaty. When was the last time he saw a razor?

Ultear drummed her nails on the plain metal table. "I want Silver."

"It's a conflict of interest."

"That you disregarded when it was Natsu in this chair. _I want Silver_."

"He's looking over the video."

The GoPro. Ultear was suddenly even _more_ nervous. Who would that film show? A psychotic girl ruthlessly beating someone just like her because she _couldn't stop_? She needed to paint herself in a better light. Needed to defend her actions, otherwise, she'd never again have the opportunity to deny Zeref in prison because she'd be there, too.

The door opened and Silver poked his head back in.

"I told you I had this," Gildarts said. "Go make coffee or something."

"Ultear's lawyer is here."

She didn't _have_ a lawyer. She struggled to see around Silver's thick frame. She saw his tattoo first and her heart did its weird palpitating one-two whenever she saw Jellal Fernandez. He sidled into the room past Silver and earned a filthy look from Gildarts.

"This is a little below your pay-grade, Mister Fernandez," Gildarts said after the door closed again.

"Pro-bono work looks good on your record, Detective," Jellal said smoothly. He sat next to Ultear. He smelled like fir and lady's perfume. Not his own, Ultear suspected.

There was a stack of papers in his hand. "I advise you to keep speaking truthfully, Ultear. Flare Corona was a very disturbed girl and you did what you needed to ensure you and Miss Agria made it out of there alive. You're a hero. I see it, even these policemen see it despite their attitude. The courts will, too, as long as you remain truthful."

He had a steady way to his hazel eyes. Ultear trusted him even as she thought of him standing idly next to Natsu as he beat the life out of Kurohebi. He had power. The kind of power she needed to keep herself safe and out of prison. And he was offering to share it with her.

"Okay."

"Go ahead."

She started _way_ back at the beginning when she'd just met Flare. She was ashamed but she spared no details, getting into how she thought she was drugged, the eyeliner and the money. The phone calls and the conspiracies to break Silver and her mother up. She talked about Flare's lockbox and the lock of silver hair, about the dead animals she found around her property and her suspicion they were Flare. About Fairy Tail and how she thought she was drugged again, and how Flare was waiting to take her home. How Cana stepped in and saved her from doing something stupid.

She brought him all the way to Sideroad Twenty-five, where Flare and Kurohebi hit her with a baseball batt, and then into Tartarus' underground parking lot. She poured it on thick, telling them in detail about Angel. Hollow eyes and chipped nails, shaking body, starvation and dehydration. The despair that clung to the concrete walls and Flare's lunacy. She didn't make anything up that she couldn't, remembering it was all on film.

Gildarts looked disturbed when she finished up. He had thirteen pages of notes all scratched in thin, concise letters, and a deep frown line by his mouth. "Thank you, Ultear. I'll let your mom know she can bring you home. Stick around, though, in case we need you again."

Jellal helped Ultear stand. "Gray Fullbuster expressed to me that Ultear was staying with him."

Gildarts sucked on his tooth. "She's going to need an official address change if that's how it's going to be."

"We'll get on that immediately. Thank you, Detective," Jellal said and opened the door for Ultear. She stepped out into the cold hallway and felt like she was walking through a holodeck program. Gray was waiting for her in the waiting room. Her mother still wasn't there.

He didn't crush her in a hug but he held out his hand and she took it.

* * *

Gray's shower was so hot, it made Ultear's skin sting. She stood beneath the spray and _tried_ to remember how it felt standing in the underground parking lot with the hammer in her hand but all she got was bits and pieces. Red ropes of hair, slick skin, Angel's sobs.

The curtain slid back slowly and Gray entered. He was nude and his eyes were red. The smell of marijuana clung to him.

"Hey," Ultear said.

He touched her arms in the same places Silver had but didn't stop there. He moved up to her shoulders and across her chest to her bruise. It was an ugly flower that caressed her throat and her breasts. He wasn't shy around any of it; like he needed to feel it, and not to bring him peace. Gray, like her, it seemed, liked it best when he felt tortured.

Ultear took his wrist and pulled his hand up so he was cradling her cheek. He moved in achingly slow. Drugs or doubt? But he kissed her. They fit together. Perfectly. His sickness fed her own. And she needed him there to keep feeding it. Otherwise, she felt like she was going to grow up and blow away.

He rested his forehead against hers. "I should have come."

"It wouldn't have mattered. She was there almost as soon as I left."

"But I'd feel better."

"Then what would you have to torture yourself with?"

His face soured. She waited for the lash back; it wasn't coming. Not in the form she expected. "Did you go to the prison because you still love him?"

"I love things _about_ him," she said honestly. Gray squeezed her arms a little tighter. "I told him I wasn't going to see him again."

"And you meant it?"

"I want to."

That seemed good enough for him. He kissed her again. "I'm glad nothing happened after. With Flare."

But it _had_. She'd evolved into the monster she was supposed to be. He knew it and he didn't seem to care.

Ultear had another moment of clarity. He knew who she was when she was at her most terrible, slinging insults and spitting poison, he knew who she was that night behind Natsu's with a crowbar in her hand, and he knew who she was when she was sitting on his counter and he was buried inside her. He knew who she was when he said _I love you_.

"Can you tell me again? What you said to me in the kitchen?"

He searched her eyes. "I love you."

 _I love you._ It rolled over her, both repulsive and welcoming. _I love you_. Both a rot and spring water. _I love you._ It changed everything and nothing because it had always been so.

His mouth pressed to hers again. Gentle. Gray was always so gentle at first, and Ultear always wanted it so rough. He would not budge on it, taking his time, careful with her head, careful with her chest. He kissed her too much. He fucked her not fast enough, against the wall with her legs around his middle, though he was diligent in making her come.

He finished on the bottom of the tub and told her again, "I love you," and she knew they were both fucked. How could they not be?

"Is there anymore weed?"

"In the drawer in the living room."

"Thanks."

He pressed his lips to her cheek and exited the bathroom. Ultear waited until she almost couldn't breathe, the steam was so thick, and then got out.

Gray was in the kitchen when she came downstairs in her thin, satin robe. He'd taken the liberty of packing his pipe for her. She could have smoked it inside but wanted the fresh air on her skin. It was warmer than it had been in months. It was going to rain; the air was heavy with it. For now, the sky was only thick with clouds. She turned on the front porch light because she wanted the noise of the street and took up residence on the concrete.

Her phone went off twice when she was out there. First Natsu texted her saying, _I heard what happened. Are you okay?_

She assured him she was fine; he invited her over. She sat on her reply. Being close to Natsu was kind of like being close to Zeref. She could almost touch his rage; it scared her; it enthralled her. And she didn't trust herself not to fuck things up for him, as Zeref said.

The next person to text was Cana. _I'm around the corner_ , she said.

Ultear responded, _I'm outside._

Cana appeared on foot. She wasn't holding anything alcoholic but her steps were truncated. "My dad told me what happened. Are you okay?"

Ultear looked for fear in Cana's expression but all she saw was concern. "Kind of fucked up."

"Yeah. I bet." Cana sat beside her. "I knew she was crazy but…"

"Your dad said she was good for Lisanna Strauss's murder as well."

"Holy fuck. It's just so…"

Insane. And horrible. And exciting, if she looked _way_ deep down.

"Was it terrible? Killing her?"

"Not as terrible as you'd think," Ultear said honestly. "I'm afraid that makes me just like her." And Zeref.

"I wouldn't have felt bad, either." Cana said the words but didn't know what that _meant_. She'd never killed anyone. Ultear wasn't about to alienate herself any more than she already had, though, and let it go. Cana picked a pebble off Gray's stair and threw it onto the walkway. "Are you going to stay here?"

"I think so."

"You should come by sometimes," Cana told the grey sky.

That was as good as telling her all was forgiven. "What about Ivan?"

"He's dealing with the fallout from Flare. He'll be too busy for a while, I'm sure. Besides, if anyone were to come against you now it'd look badly on him, wouldn't it? People would be asking questions. So, if you want to roll out of my place at five in the morning in your underwear, go ahead."

"You could come over here too, you know," Ultear offered.

Cana stood. "Yeah. Maybe I will."

Ultear was on her own again. She lit her pipe and inhaled a huge gust of smoke. She held it for as long as she possibly could before releasing it. Through the haze, she saw a car pulled up to the curb. A figure ascended the driveway.

She wasn't scared; Jellal Fernandez had a very particular sway to his shoulders.

"That stuff is garbage," he greeted firstly.

"What kind of lawyer knows about garbage drugs?"

"All good lawyers do. High stress."

"Well, garbage or not, my head's a mess," Ultear said.

"Because you discovered who you were?"

"I always knew who I was. I just discovered what that person was capable of."

"And it scared you." Ultear brought her lighter back to the bowl. Jellal took it from her and filled her hands with something else. Another pipe with some light brown powder inside. "Try this instead."

"What's this?"

"Some people like to call it Dream Gun."

"And what is it _really_?"

"Opium."

She'd had it before; it was sweet and numbing. Stronger than marijuana and maybe just what she needed. "What's that going to cost?"

"Nothing."

"That's bullshit," Ultear said. "You want something." They always did.

Jellal leaned back against Gray's porch. "Alright. You're special, Miss Milkovich. You're smart, you're ruthless, but you're also level-headed."

She didn't _feel_ level-headed when she was pounding Flare into the concrete. She felt rabid.

"You're fiercely loyal to those close to you. Perhaps I _do_ want to take advantage of you while you feel like you have no place to go."

She raised her eyebrow. "I live here."

Jellal was charming when he smiled; it softened his words. "You have a place to live, but do you have a place to _belong_? Will you go back to your family home, your job, where the people there will treat you like a monster, or will you do nothing? People without purpose become lost, and you, Miss Milkovich, do not look like the kind of girl that wants to wander listlessly, alone. You want a chance to discover this new you. And you need a safe environment in which to do so."

Like Zeref, he saw her too clearly.

"So you're right. The opium is a pretense. But I want something much more valuable than money. Friendship."

She liked the idea of having friends in high places. She lit the pipe. "Tell me what it means to be your friend."

* * *

A.N.

Once, my friend chased me around with a sledgehammer. We're not friends anymore.

Aside from that morbid little allegory, this is the end. There will be a sequel. The last, hopefully. It will be a Jerza. I don't know when I'll get to it.

Thanks so much, everyone that took a chance and stuck through reading this story. Some of you have been with me since Noir. Some of you are new. All of you are fantastic. Thanks so much.


End file.
